Google less effective than newspapers at driving web traffic

A new survey of 1,000 UK consumers by Greenfield Online finds that text links such as those on Google Adwords are less likely to drive consumers to a website than advertising or editorial in newspapers and on television. The most effective influencer of consumer behaviour is customer email. Consumers receiving “warm” emails from companies they already have a relationship with are 52% more likely to visit their website as a result. The next most effective channel is TV and newspapers, with consumers referencing these sources 34% more likely to visit a company’s website. Surprisingly, seeing a text link like Google Adwords increases the likelihood by only 8%.

how people use search engines

The results will contradict the website analytics data of most Globaledge.co.uk readers. It is much more common to find search traffic as the main referrer rather than direct visits. What people say (in a survey) and what people do can be very different but before we dismiss the findings, it is important to remember that most web data currently only measures what happens on the last click. It doesn’t tell you anything about what influenced people’s behaviour to get to your website. This is currently the subject of much debate in the affiliate industry.

Half of my marketing budget is wasted…

Marketing effectiveness is very difficult to measure. As Lord Leverhulme famously said: “Half of the money I spend on marketing is wasted. The only trouble is, I don’t know which half”. As an overseas property agency, you are in an even more difficult position. Overseas buyers are difficult and expensive to reach outside of online media and you are unlikely to have the market research budgets to evaluate performance.

Awareness and credibility

Measuring and improving online metrics is important but focusing on them exclusively is short sighted. People are much more likely to buy from companies they have heard of and the propensity to purchase increases exponentially if you are seen as credible. A good measure of credibility is word-of-mouth recommendation. Measuring the percentage of enquiries that come from this route should be a key metric for any company serious about marketing.

Branding

Measuring the customer journey from beginning to end is nearly impossible but the research above and general common sense suggest it is sensible to invest some marketing budget in building awareness and credibility. Branding is about creating an environment for your direct channels to work more effectively.

The bigger picture

To many agents, branding is a dirty word. Marketing is all about leads and sales. At Globaledge.co.uk we extol the virtues of online but there is lots of anecdotal evidence that online media works better when people have been “warmed up” through other channels. If you compared the click-through rates on paid search of Rightmove.co.uk with a little known media portal, there would be no prizes for guessing who would come out on top.

Implications for your marketing mix

You need to build a case for all marketing activity and it is not advisable to blow a huge proportion of your budget on things you cannot track back directly to lead generation. However, human behaviour and decision making are more complex than the numbers on your analytics software package might suggest. If you haven’t already, you might want to consider the following:

Investing in word-of-mouth marketing – MRI invest significant sums in their referral program and it works well by all accounts
Investing in PR – If you get coverage in the broadsheets it helps both awareness and credibility. Getting it at the right price is something different.
If you have big budgets, consider a series in the property sections of national newspapers. One-off adverts don’t work as well as you don’t get the frequency needed to build awareness
Buyers are spending a lot of time on overseas property portals. Consider some branding activity on the ones that have proven themselves to generate leads.
Develop an email CRM program. The buying cycle is a long one and customer email is a very effective channel.

User Comments

Good stuff for the nitty-gritty of property marketing. As much as my firm, Criterion Global has cultivated its interactive practice, TV/print still plays a critical role in branding. But, then again, it is hard to determine ROI for branding campaigns, and ROI is often the #1 concern for our developer clients. In ways, the property media mix is trapped in a paradox between the "bigger" messaging of TV/print and the targeted, accountable online micro-messaging that provides such detailed analytics, but doesn't cast quite a broad net. In the end, the only option is to diversify the media investment, and "mix" it up.

Amy McKeever, Criterion Global

Need more leads?

Select a category

Featured Advertisers