Christi Olson is a Search Evangelist at Bing who discusses how search is evolving from query-based searches on desktops to personalized searches across multiple devices using technologies like Cortana, Siri and Alexa. Bing research shows search plays an important role across all stages of a customer's decision journey. The document also discusses how search is becoming more predictive, personalized and proactive through artificial intelligence and how this benefits advertisers on Bing.
2. Christi Olson
Search Evangelist, Bing | Microsoft
Professional Background
@ChristiJOlson
Introducing Roy:
May 8th, 2016
Boy Meets Girl
Happily Ever After
Our Fur Kids:
Bella the Wunderpug
Elsa the Not-So-Mini Schnauzer
3.
4. What is the Customer Decision Journey?
The CDJ is the series of behaviors and interactions a customer
takes throughout the purchase path
5. My purchase decision
journey began a little
over 5 years ago…
When I needed a new car
and knew we wanted to
have a baby.
6. Consumer Decision Journey: My car seat doesn’t fit in my sedan!
See friends post
pictures of various
Volvo SUVs on
social media.
Search for “safest
vehicle reviews”.
Click organic listing.
Search for “best
family vehicle”.
Click paid listing.
Visit Volvo
website.
Notice Volvo
display ad on
Car and Driver.
See TV ad for Volvo
Summer Sales Event.
Search for “Volvo XC90”.
Click paid listing.
Visit Volvo
website. Find
local dealer.
Purchase
at dealership.
7. Search is the glue – It fits across all stages of
the Customer Decision Journey
Learn More
Become Informed
Explore
Refine Options
Compare:
Ratings, Reviews,
Features & cost
Availability & Price
Loyalty & Get Help
9. Understanding the Types of Journeys
FrequencyofPurchases
Cost of Failure
Consideration
Low High
Buying
Diapers
Buying
a
Home
Buying
Baby Mattress
& Crib
Buying
a Car Seat
Buying
a
Car
10. Where is the consumer on the continuum?
FrequencyofPurchases
Cost of Failure
Impulse
Habitual
Deeply
Considered
Somewhat
Considered
Somewhat
Considered
15. Bing Proprietary Research
What is the value of search participating across the journey?
There is incremental value outside of receiving a paid
click. Consumers who see a brand ad on non-brand
queries have a measurable, and statistically significant
lift in:
• Unaided Brand Awareness
• Purchase Intent
• Market Leadership
StatisticallySignificant
Increase
16. 72%
of brand ad clicks had a non-brand
or conquest term in the user journey
preceding the brand click.
Bing Proprietary Research
How brand and non-brand keywords fit into the journey
Non-Brand … Brand
Non-Brand … Brand
17. Bing Proprietary Research
Appearing in on Non-Brand queries in the TOFU increases
future brand searches
30%
More likely to do a branded search after being
exposed to a brand ad on a generic search
query or a competitors branded query
18. 15%
Increase to conversion rate after users were
exposed to a branded ad on a generic or
competitive brands search query.
Bing Proprietary Research
And there is a statistically significant lift to conversion.
20. CDJ Action and Takeaways
1. Leverage site links that allow consumers to
self-identify their CDJ stage, and
immediately take them where they want to
go.
2. Create custom landing pages for the
different stages of the CDJ.
3. Create longer-tail keyword phrases to catch
searchers within different stages of the CDJ.
4. Place UET tracking tags on your site and set
up remarketing campaigns which will
enable you to reach consumers throughout
their journey.
1. Leverage Product Ads, where pricing and
promos can be listed.
2. Focus on “Where.” The keyword “where”
signals an intent to buy.
3. Be sure your campaign and site are
mobile-friendly to catch consumers on the
go.
4. Set up remarketing campaigns targeting
users with strong intent signals, such as
those demonstrating product page
engagement and shopping cart
abandonment.
23. Evolution of Search
Cortana. Siri. Alexa.
Paid search is moving out of the search box and into the
fabric our lives. Bing is ready to power new personalized
searches across the devices of tomorrow.
2000
Query Search
Match Types
Text Ads
2010
Demographic Search
Day Parting
Language
2012
Mobile Search
Device Bidding
Location
2016
Voice Search
TOMORROW
Personalized Search
Actionable
Predictive
BEYOND
Artificial Intelligence
2013
Audiences
RLSA
1990
1st Search Engine
24. Evolution of Search
Language in Search is Expanding
OLD SEARCH
Match type
Desktop
QueriesClicks
Product Driven
NEW SEARCH
Mobilized People-Driven
Actionable
Integrated
Localized
Predictive
Customized
Personalized
33. TopSpot is a Bing Ads Partner
Benefits of being a Bing Ads Partner grants TopSpot:
• Access to the robust Bing Ads API for easy and efficient campaign creation, optimization
and management.
• Expanded suite of advertising solutions for your clients, including the Microsoft Advertising Exchange.
• Access to training, account service support and marketing tools to help drive more effective advertising solutions
for your clients.
What that means to you, as a business owner:
• More time to focus on daily operations and providing better service to their customers.
• The ability to reach their desired audience through advanced targeting capabilities, including location, radius and
demographic targeting.
• Assurance of working with a Bing Ads SMB Partner to maximize their return on investment.
• A high-quality audience. Reach 168 million unique searchers on Bing and Yahoo who spend 24 percent more
online than the average Internet searcher.1
Partnering with Top Spot & Bing
34
34. Contact
Info
Full Name: Christi Olson
Company: Microsoft, Bing Advertising
Job Title: Search Evangelist
Twitter: @ChristiJOlson
THANK YOU!
Notes de l'éditeur
For years, paid search has centered around clicks. Getting the most clicks. Getting the highest click-through rate. Marketers have obsessed at delivering the most clicks for the lowest cost. But who is behind all of those clicks? And what are they really looking for?
New research at Bing Ads now allows us to better understand the customers behind those clicks and where they are in the customer decision journey (CDJ). Such insights not only help advertisers to optimize their campaigns, they also help to further search as the personal assistants of tomorrow.
All consumers go through five distinct stages, which vary depending on the type of purchase: initiation, research, comparison, transaction and experience. For different types of journeys, each stage has a different level of importance, depending on cost of failure, frequency, cost and complexity of the task, and the type of shopper. Whether you are hopping online to replace a broken espresso maker or find yourself in the rather unpleasant market for a new hot water heater, you are subject to the same five CDJ stages, although they will vary in length and importance.
For the espresso maker, you’ll probably skip the initiation and research stages and start to compare models for an immediate purchase. For the hot water heater, you’ll need much more time to get educated before making a decision. Who knew the future of water heaters was tankless? And that a tankless water heater could save you hundreds each year? You’re now ready to enter the comparison stage.
As we look at the consumer deskins journey, we had three key questions we were looking to answer:
What type of journey is this customer on
Where is the consumer on the DCJ
What type of consumer is it
By identifying the type of journey, the shopper’s CDJ stage and the type of shopper, you can deliver a higher-utility set of content and actions within Search
We’ll look at each one a little more closely.
In an slightly considered, consumers are likely to skip or condense the education and consideration phases. These consumers are acting in response to familiar sources and/or low cost of failure.
If your customers center mostly around shorter/habitual/impulse journeys, then it is highly important to appear at the critical purchase stage. Your content should focus on ratings, reviews, pricing, promotions and local targeting. Your consumers are thinking, “Which stores have the best deal?,” “Are there coupons available?” and “How quickly can I get it?”
In order to better understand the unique journey types all consumers go through, researchers created a continuum chart below that compares two driving factors within every purchase: frequency of a purchases against the potential cost of failure.
These two elements will help advertisers pinpoint the consumer mindset and which CDJ stages are most important to their customers. Highly frequent, high-cost-of-failure purchases place customers on a deeply considered journey type. Infrequent, low-cost-of-failure purchases place consumers on a slightly considered/habitual/impulse journey type.
Once you’ve established your customer’s journey type, you can delve even deeper to identify their exact stages on the customer decision journey.
In a deeply considered journey, consumers may come to us at any point in the process. We can expect that they will look for answers that address any stage of the journey, and look to accomplish the specific goal of that stage before making a purchase. As a consumer gains confidence with a particular journey type or a specific source for answers, the overall journey may shorten.
If most of your consumers are within deeply considered journeys, it will be important for your brand to appear within each stage of the CDJ. Your search strategy should be to help consumers initiate, research, compare, purchase and continue with a follow-up.
You should develop content around research, buying guides, ratings, reviews, features, pricing, availability and future services. Your customers span across various stages and are thinking, “What are my options?,” “Do I need one?,” “Which model got the best reviews?” and “How much will it cost?”
You can see this example come through for consumer that may be interested in replacing their water heater – a complex decision. And you will want to provide touchpoints and answers across the different stages.
Initiation: I need a water heater. What IS a tank-less water heater? Why would I buy one?
Research: I learned enough to know I want a tank-less water heater. What do I need to know about my house to select one? What are the options and features I need to choose from?
Comparison: I’ve narrowed my list of options. Which model has the best set of features for me? Which model and manufacturer get the best reviews? How much will it cost?
Transaction: I want to buy a Rheem RTE-13. Which store has the best deal? Is there a coupon I can use? Can I get it delivered and installed
Customer Services: I need an install kit for my water heater. Which model did I buy again?
Once you’ve established your customer’s journey type, you can delve even deeper to identify their exact stages on the customer decision journey.
Once you’ve established your customer’s journey type, you can delve even deeper to identify their exact stages on the customer decision journey.
Note: The data from this study is from a large US Auto Manufacturer.
Source Data: Internal Microsoft Research August 2016
Bidding on non-brand/conquest terms display inherent value aiding brand recallleading to higher conversion rates.
72% of Branded ad clicks were preceded by a conquest or non-brand term.
A conquest query is a search query involving one of the competitors brand terms. For instance, at Bing, Adwords, Google or Yahoo Gemini would be examples of conquest queries. Generic queries are queries that do not contain your brand, i.e. Microsoft or Bing, or product specific brands (example: adCenter, Bing Ads, Hotmail, Outlook), generic would be something like email.
Note: The data from this study is from a large US Auto Manufacturer.
Source Data: Internal Microsoft Research August 2016
Bidding on non-brand/conquest terms display inherent value aiding brand recallleading to higher conversion rates.
72% of Branded ad clicks were preceded by a conquest or non-brand term.
A conquest query is a search query involving one of the competitors brand terms. For instance, at Bing, Adwords, Google or Yahoo Gemini would be examples of conquest queries. Generic queries are queries that do not contain your brand, i.e. Microsoft or Bing, or product specific brands (example: adCenter, Bing Ads, Hotmail, Outlook), generic would be something like email.
Note: We can’t mention the brands that are here in notes. We can only mention that it is a large US Auto Manufacturer.
Source Data: Internal Microsoft Research August 2016
Data and Findings:
30%
70%
Exposure to a branded PPC ad on a non-term query increased conversion rate 15% on subsequent branded searches
Bidding on non-brand/conquest terms display inherent value aiding brand recallleading to higher conversion rates.
72% of GMC Branded ad clicks were preceded by a conquest or non-brand term.
Users exposed to a GMC ad on non-brand/conquest query had a 15% higher CR.
Understanding the consumer also has tremendous benefits. Roughly 2/3rds of shoppers fall into 1 of 3 shopping styles.
Knowing what type of consumer you might have for your business can help solve for what type of experiences you should deliver to them.
For a Researcher, they are looking for help from all sides and like advice in the form or recommendations or buying guides
For the overwhelmed, they know what they want from the start and are more generally knowledgeable about the purchase decision and would prefer curation
For the expert, since they already are knowledgeable, developing experiences that show them the latest trends maybe helpful
As the search providers continue to invest in tools and capabilities to target audiences, it becomes increasingly important to understand user intent and the consumer mindset. Consumers expect search results that are personalized, localized and actionable. They are shouting, “What is a tankless water heater?” from across the room to their Amazon Echo. They’re searching for espresso makers on their phones. And in their cars. Tomorrow’s leading advertisers need to be ready with contextualized content delivered at the right moments.
Now is the time to move away from the click mindset and start building out strategies to better connect with your customers.
Now, information is not what it used to be. The way we think about it has changed. The information we get, the way we access it, the way we consume it and the way we search for it has changed.
The results we want and the searches we’re conducting are shifting. We don’t want a barrage of information or a list of links. We expect more from our technology. We don’t want to learn it, we want it to learn us. Where we are, who we are, what we’re thinking, even what we should be thinking. We want predictive, personal results.
We want results that are intuitive and smarter than the keywords we might clumsily thumb into a search field. We want results that are with us not just in location, not just in subject, but with us in mindset.
Build out to the content on the next slide. This could be done with three separate slides or
The first is pervasive intelligence, Cortana will be there with you on any device wherever you go. So it doesn’t matter if you are on a phone, or a tablet of a laptop, a smart TV, Xbox or hololens – Cortana and by extension search will be there with you to give you the information that you need.
Now we’re bringing together all of that intelligence into some really cool experiences powered by Cortana. Being able to anticipate needs and remove barriers to get the things you need easier and quicker all with a very natural interface. We call this conversation as a platform and I want to show you what that’s like.
We’re using Bing searches as an early warning signal for people suffering from pancreatic cancer. Currently the 5 year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just 3%. This methodology more than doubles that survival rate to 7% by looking for tell tale signs in search behaviour that could mean people have cancer. Optimistic estimates suggest 1 in 6 pancreatic cancer patients could be discovered this way. And the accuracy is phenomenal with just 1 in 100,000 false positives. There are 340,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer every year globally and sadly that number is on the rise. That’s 51,000 people (a packed football stadium) we could help by doubling their chance of beating cancer and an additional 2040 people that don’t have to die needlessly.
Now predictive intelligence is a fascinating area and one that is developing rapidly for us. We are using the power of search and the machine learning algorithms behind Bing to anticipate what’s going to happen in the future.