Search marketers may benefit from including offline channels

A new study from iProspect sheds light on how important offline channels are to online marketers. According to the study, roughly 67% of searches were driven by offline channels - television, newspaper or radio.

by Kristina Knight

The study also found that 39% of online searchers are influenced to buy products by offline channels.

The offline channels are intriguing users enough that after seeing or hearing an ad, consumers will search for the company name, slogan or the product or service name. This is great news except for one fact - offline ads aren't set up to make it easy for an online search to direct a user to the right place. So marketers need to consider carefully the language and information offered in offline ads.

In addition to mentioning the specific product name or even a website link, marketers must ensure that their SEO initiatives include the same product names or phrases so that users searching from an offline ad can find the information easily.

“Two-thirds of search users jump through hoops to perform those searches now. Imagine what that number would be if marketers actually made it easy for them," said Robert Murray, president of iProspect.

According to the latest research from Nielsen//Netratings, Google accounted for more than 50% (4 billion) of July searches. Their closest competitors were Yahoo with 20% (1.5 billion) and MSN/Windows Live Search 13%(1 billion) of searches.