The modern marketer’s guide to search behavior
Acting on consumer intent is one of the keys to unlocking growth. The things people search, sites they visit, and videos they watch are not only expressing intent, they’re reshaping the traditional marketing funnel. Marketers can sift through all the signals left behind and gain insight that can help them predict intent.
But what about the underlying consumer needs that drive intent in the first place? After all, you don’t wake up feeling intent. You wake up feeling a need. It’s clear in the way people talk: “I need something.” “I want something.” And even in the way they search.
We partnered with Kantar to better understand the underlying motivations driving search behaviors. For the uninitiated, Kantar’s Needscope is a qualitative and quantitative segmentation approach that uncovers the functional, social, and emotional drivers of consumer behavior within a given market.
There are six canonical consumer needs: Surprise Me, Help Me, Reassure Me, Educate Me, Impress Me, and Thrill Me. Each need state is made up of a combination of emotional, social, and functional needs. Emotions are the foundations of need states. Major companies typically use a research approach like Needscope to guide portfolio management, brand strategy, and creative execution. With a portfolio of shampoo brands, for example, you’d want to cover each need state in this product category, implemented at every stage from design to messaging. A Reassure Me shampoo would make the consumer feel comforted, safe, and soothed, while an Impress Me shampoo would project for a more glamorous, even celebrity-driven image.
How Consumer Needs Drive Search
We initially thought search behavior might be dominated by one or two needs. Educate Me seemed like a no-brainer because search is inherently an information exchange. But we found that search behavior is driven by all six needs.
For example, we saw a search query for “What car should you drive if you make $150,000?” This particular search provides a great window into the Impress Me need—one that seeks to reinforce a level of importance and status. Also falling into this category are people seeking a fancy brand of coffee or premium travel experiences.
Or take the Reassure Me state. A shopper with this need is searching for simplicity, comfort, and trust. Picture someone doing a home-improvement project. Even after doing the appropriate research, they are still searching in the time between the shelf and the cashier to make sure they’ve got the best tool for the job at the right price.
Satisfying Needs Leads to Growth
We know that searches don’t simply happen at random moments. They’re driven by needs. And it turns out these emotional drivers are largely consistent across categories. Marketers tend to think of search as purely transactional, something near the bottom of the traditional marketing funnel. But with the marketing funnel changing, so should marketers’ approach to search. Emotion fuels marketers’ thinking when it comes to creative execution in other media. It should also inform their thinking when it comes to search. By focusing your search strategy on satisfying people’s needs, you have a better chance of influencing their decision and ultimately, winning the sale.
For more insights, visit thinkwithgoogle.com.
By Justin De Graaf, Global Head of Ads Research and Insights at Google
Launched nearly three years ago by Vincent, who helped lead Apple’s creative agency TBWA\MEDIA Arts Lab for more than a decade, Venice, California–based FNDR (pronounced “founder”) has quietly become a go-to adviser for an elite cadre of entrepreneurs. Clients include Snap’s Evan Spiegel, Glossier’s Emily Weiss, Farfetch’s José Neves, Airtable’s Howie Liu, and Daily Harvest’s Rachel Drori.
While on-demand computing services and new business models like direct-to-consumer selling have made it easier than ever to launch a new company, startups that hope to survive need more than a beloved product or a plan to outmaneuver incumbents. “You have to be much more focused on having your story buttoned up, not just from a marketing standpoint, but from a strategic perspective,” says Kirsten Green, founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, which is an investor in Glossier.
Vincent and his three partners, Stephen Butler, Rebekah Jefferis, and Nick Barham—veterans of creative agencies such as Chiat/day, 72andsunny, and Wieden+kennedy—help startups hone their stories by putting founders through a series of meetings designed to tease out their values and beliefs, challenging leaders to think about the human impact of technology and the social contract between companies and the communities in which they operate. The result is an “intentional narrative” that can guide decisions. “We give [founders] license to take big swings and make transformational changes in their business,” says Jefferis.
WE GIVE FOUNDERS LICENSE TO TAKE BIG SWINGS.”
FNDR’S real magic seems to be its ability to distill a company’s narrative into just a few words, which provides a concise reference point for everything from branding to acquisitions. “Within three minutes of meeting Stephen [Butler], before he even knew the extent of my dream, he spat out two words that are still the core of everything,” says Anstruther-gough-calthorpe, the audio entrepreneur. “They were: ‘Listen well’ ”—a phrase that sums up both the quality of the technology and its potential health benefits. The Iris homepage now greets visitors with the headline “We enable the world to listen well.” A few years ago, Vincent described social media to Snap CEO Spiegel as “lying to strangers, truth to friends.” This past July, Snap unveiled its first global ad campaign, highlighting pairs of “real friends.”
Though the FNDR partners come from the ad world, they and their clients insist that the company is not a creative agency. “I’m not going to FNDR to get a good-looking website or to create a brand identity,” Forerunner’s Green says. “I’m going to push the team’s thinking.”
It’s an approach that Vincent mastered while embedded at Apple, where he met with Steve Jobs weekly for 11 years. “What Steve wanted was a highly provocative two hours,” recalls Vincent, who is credited with conceiving the iconic ad campaign featuring dancing, ipod-wearing silhouettes. “And if it wasn’t, he’d be like, ‘Boring! Try to do better next meeting.’ ” FNDR may not mint the next Steve Jobs, but if its system works, its clients’ stories will always be engaging.