Correlation between social media users, search and CTRs
Social media users are much more likely to search for specific brands and products, and consider purchasing, which in turn increases click-through rates on a brand’s paid search ad, according to new research from GroupM and comScore.
comScore’s first ever study looking at the relationship between social media exposure and search behaviour – ‘The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption’ – found that there is “dramatic” correlation between brands that use social media and search behaviour.
“Every day consumers express their intent via search. Now, we better understand how that intent is established via social media and the interplay between the channels,” Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search, said. “There is a valuable audience for advertisers to focus on who are engaged with brands through social media and search.
“The study further validates our view that media discovery, specifically a brand’s owned and earned media, is as important to success as the paid media we handle every day. Generating upper-funnel awareness and influencing consideration through social media can produce better down-the-funnel performance with paid media, such as paid search.”
comScore’s research showed that searches who engage with social media, especially those who are exposed to a brand’s influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms compared to consumers who do not engage with social media.
In addition, consumers who are exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search programme are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand’s products compared to users who have only seen paid search.
The study also revealed a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search – consumers who engage with social media are more likely to click on a brand’s paid search ad compared to those exposed to the brand’s paid search alone.
Among users using a brand’s product name in the search term, the CTR increased from 4.5% to 11.8% when users were exposed to both influenced social media as well as paid search around a brand.
Whereas, in organic search, users searching for a specific brand product who have been exposed to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links that lead to the advertiser’s site than an average user who is just seeing a brand’s paid search advert.
Graham Mudd, vice president of comScore, said: “Social media-exposed consumers are far more likely to search for brand and product-related terms, and click on a brand’s paid search ad. This finding provides strong evidence that investing in social media marketing can both increase initial brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has decided to purchase.”
The research highlights several implications for the search marketing and social marketing industry, most notably because users who use social media are more engaged overall and, as a result, are more likely to be looking for things to buy and brands to consider.
Overall, consumers using social media are 1.7 times more likely to search with the intention of considering brands or products to purchase compared to users who do not use social media, said comScore.
“Blending paid, earned and owned media, and putting your brand in places where it can be discovered and part of the natural conversation, will enable advertisers to influence the outcome of intention expressed by consumers, and capture this heavily engaged audience,” Copeland concluded.
The new study ties in with comScore’s recent research, which found that social networking sites accounted for more than 20% of all US display ads viewed online in June.
MySpace and Facebook delivered more than 80% of ads among sites in the social networking category.
eMarketer also recently forecast that US advertisers will increase their social network ad spending by 13.2% in 2010, to $1.3 billion.