Decoding Decisions MY | Google Ads

Key Takeaways

[Music] hello samapagi and thank you so much for joining us today last year in october you join us at think search where we explored how information overload in the digital age has led to many malaysians feeling overwhelmed and turning to search to help make sense of it all to illustrate our recent research found that 7 out of 10 malaysians use google search as the number one touch point to look for relevant information across all categories whether they are making small or big decisions consumers will seek assistance to ensure they are confident about their choices now this is where brands and businesses play an important role in helping consumers understand their preferences and providing them with helpful and trustworthy information in today's event think with google presents a series entitled decoding decisions where we are honored to be joined by global thought leaders such as the new york times best-selling author malcolm gladwell and the author of how brands grow by professor byron sharp both esteemed guests will share their perspectives on the ever-changing consumer behavior in malaysia and southeast asia and equally as essential how brands like yours can use search to show up for your customers in their times of need and ultimately drive business results so sit back relax and please enjoy the show [Music] do you remember a time when the only way to find out what was happening in the world was through the evening news or if you wanted to find out the distance between the sun and the earth you had to ask a teacher or look it up in the library liked a song but didn't know its name well you had to just sit by the radio and hope that it would be announced by the dj today we carry the vastness of human knowledge in our pockets facts perspectives opinions all accessible by the touch of a button with so much information out there and so many resources to navigate them it can be difficult to make sense of it my name is christina morlivar i'm a social entrepreneur author and human rights advocate i'm also a marketing professional not long ago i got thinking about how much the way we access and consume information has changed dramatically in recent years so how has this access to information change our collective psyche and how has it impacted our basic human need to make sense of it all and how can brands benefit and thrive from helping us along this complex journey and so i set out to gather insights from experts in the field malcolm gladwell is a world-renowned journalist author and public speaker he's written for the new yorker for more than 25 years and published seven books five of which have charted on the new york times bestseller list you know through most of our history as human beings problems were caused by a lack of information they were puzzles and you solve a puzzle by going and finding new data that resolves the problem on the table in an information scarce world that's what decision making looks like it's puzzle solving well we're no longer in an information scarce world we're now in the opposite we're in a world where we're inundated with information so we're no longer really dealing with puzzles we're dealing uh with mysteries you have a big mound of data in front of you and now your job is to sift through that data make sense of it prioritize it throw out what isn't important zero in on what is important it's a task of understanding and a task of analysis um in the digital age the problems that we're faced with are overwhelmingly mysteries sapna chada is google's vice president of marketing for india southeast asia and south asia sapna's experience as a business and marketing leader gives her a unique perspective on the ways consumer behavior is changing here and now in 2020 the onset of the pandemic pushed millions of people in southeast asia and india to begin using digital in ways we hadn't before without a choice we had to embrace this behavioral change and the amazing thing is these new behaviors have now become habitual people have made the most of this hybrid life taking the best of physical and digital solutions where it's most convenient they now use digital to do things that used to be strictly in-person activities whether it's attending a yoga class catching up with friends or even streaming a wedding to loved ones across the world people are even buying cars online now what happened to test driving the physical and digital worlds have become seamless extensions of one another the modern consumer embraces this variety of choice consumers want offerings that feel personal to them that meet their needs and mirror their values but this plethora of choices is a double-edged sword what are the things that uh human beings intuitively have difficulty doing is prioritizing information so i say to you what are you looking for in a car and you say well i want something that's roomy that gets good gas mileage that looks good that goes really fast and is really convenient to service right that's a typical response a consumer might give but in fact that's not really the way that's not really what you want in a car because if you if i were to sit with you and interrogate those decisions i would discover that some of those factors matter far more to you than others what really matters to you is that it goes really fast what really matters to you is that it's roomy enough that you can fit your two kids seats in the back and have room for all your luggage and everything else doesn't matter as much that kind of ability to look at a whole series of data points and appropriately rank them is one of the hardest and most valuable things we can do to assist people in making sense of of complicated decisions it makes sense that with large amounts of unstructured information people become confused even paralyzed in their decision making hi it's christine we have the information right and this results in a breakdown in trust as people feel the need to be continually discerning and skeptical about which sources they engage with in fact 87 of people say trustworthy information is more important now than before the start of the pandemic and 84 say they would purchase from brands that provide trustworthy information there is no denying it trust is a big issue in the modern digital world and it's something we as humans struggle with on our own i think we can all agree that in this day and age trust has to be earned you cannot just show up online with a great offer or idea and expect people to take you at face value as marketers we already know that decision making for consumers is a complex emotional process and in an era of information overload we've discovered that people tend to be even more distrustful online further adding to the emotional strain of decision making we recently conducted in-depth research across india and southeast asia to explore how people make purchase decisions and we found that when people are exposed to a purchase trigger such as a digital ad a billboard or even a conversation with a friend they begin a process of exploration and using evaluation using a wide range of online sources to review their options and further refine their decisions we call this the messy middle a complex space between triggers and purchase where customers are won and lost at its core this messy middle is fueled by emotional tensions that are looking to be resolved and is unique to every single person for example i recently switched from a cosmetics brand that i've used for a long time to a number of new brands that i had never tried before it all started with me searching for professional look for women i bounced around between reviews news articles and landed on a video of a public figure who was talking about her personal style and her makeup routine i watched this video which was super informative but rather than making my decision easier it just opened up so many more questions for me she was talking about different brands contouring skin tone when and why she wears red lipstick so after watching that video i then spent hours and probably days going through countless searches to get answers to all of those questions that were now in my head and gradually piece by piece i was able to figure out what would work best for me and which products would fulfill my needs and i think that's also a really important thing to remember there is rarely a right or wrong answer in these instances what's right is different for every person septa's story is one that is no doubt familiar to people all over the world that question of what's the best choice for me often leads us straight into the messy middle a lot of people find navigating the messy middle extremely difficult in fact research proves that information overload is a leading cause of difficulty in making purchasing decisions so what skills do people need in order to make good decisions we think of decision good decision making as being a function of intelligence and expertise and we overlook how much it's fundamentally a question of character there's a wonderful research that um uh that characterizes decision makers into two groups foxes who know a little bit about a whole great number of things and hedgehogs who know a lot about a little and intuitively i think that we believe hedgehogs are the ones who in their area of expertise make the best decisions turns out empirically that's not the case the fox has a tremendous advantage over the hedgehog because if you know a little bit about a lot of things it's probably easier for you to exercise humility in your decision making you're never blinded by your own expertise you're always aware of your own limitations going into any kind of of complex decision and for this people turn to search in a world where decision making is more difficult than ever before people are continuously searching for answers that's why we are humbled that billions of consumers turn to google to search for answers every single day and this pushes us to continuously improve to provide people with the most relevant and helpful information from the most trustworthy and authoritative sources to help them make better decisions throughout the messy middle google search is the trusted place consumers keep coming back to in fact 73 percent of people say google search is their number one touch point when looking for relevant information across all categories people come to search to gain clarity and confidence when making a decision this is because we fundamentally design search to identify information that people are likely to find useful and reliable additionally we've developed a number of search features that not only help you make sense of the information you're seeing online but that also ranks this information based on how helpful it will be and provides direct access to important sources like health organizations and government entities by doing this search has removed some of the complexity people have to contend with when they make decisions google search searches standing as a trusted information source and a platform that people come back to time and time again comes down to a willingness to continually evolve with the user's ever changing needs and serve the best to users and that evolution is constant the search algorithm changes on average six times per day as i discovered this is something that drives google search team on their mission to continually provide a more useful service one of our latest innovations that is powering our search technology is the multi-task unified model or what we call mob which is an ai powered tool that can simultaneously understand information across a wide range of formats such as text images and video mom is not just able to process information but it's able to make implicit connections across all these different sources all at the same time people across southeast asia and india they've continued to deepen their relationships with digital with growing searches related to online shopping and internet connectivity we've collated all of these trends into our urine search report which is available for you to read on our think with google site [Music] it's clear that google search is now integral with people's decision-making processes and this presents an incredible opportunity for brands consider the messy emotional paths to purchase that consumers are treading and figure out how to help them on their way today people have more access to information than at any other time in history and it's our job to make sure they're connecting with the highest quality most authoritative most relevant information for them and that they're able to access the information that makes a difference in their lives this is our core value and we feel deeply responsible to our users to make this happen [Music] hearing from malcolm and sapna really opened my eyes to how people make decisions in the modern world and how search can help them do this but it's time to dig a little deeper into the second part of my original question i want to know what role search plays for brands and how they can use it more effectively to support their growth to get the insights that matter i approach some of the top minds in global marketing who can give me valuable perspectives and hard data to guide my understanding first up on my list was byron sharp he's a professor of marketing from the erenberg bass institute it's the world's largest center for research into marketing i'm really excited hi byron it's really a pleasure to meet you one of the key topics that you talk a lot about is obviously physical and mental availability of brands could you talk a little bit about that and tell us exactly what you mean by that in my book how brands grow i talk about all the empirical research over decades across lots of different categories that shows particular laws patterns in the way that buyers buy and the way that brands perform and the theory that sort of fits with all those laws at once together is what we would call availability theory that in the long run brands when they're competing for market share do so by building mental and physical availability of all the millions of brands in the world that i could buy i tend to keep going back to the ones that are in my head the ones that i recognize when i see them on shelf that i know what they do right this is the mental availability and then the physical availability is that that i can actually easily buy them that they will take my credit card that they will deliver that i know where to park that i've got the app on my phone all of these things make it possible for me to buy and when a consumer has overlapping mental and physical availability those are the brands that they're going to be buying so are lines blurred between online and offline how does a brand build mental networks in this omnichannel world how should brands consider search for example the internet now is a very mature medium and you know people are very used to being in the physical world into the virtual world and bouncing between them all the time so yes they are incredibly linked and where does search advertising fit into this the search is huge and search is like well i liken it too it's physical availability i mean it's it's digital virtual but it's different from advertising because advertising hits us when we're not largely where we're actually not in the buying situation you know search advertising is where someone they are they're looking for something so that's very much like they're they're walking down the high street and they go ah well i i need some shoes this is a shoe shop i'm going in here and i'm going to look around very hard work for the sales team to gain availability in physical bricks and mortar stores search is another way of doing that allowing consumers to be able to purchase your product putting it in front of them when they're in a category buying moment and actually as a brand when a consumer is searching for something at that moment they're paying attention so there is an opportunity for marketers when consumers are in that state when they're really looking for something specific on the search to speak to them it's the opportunity if you make it and like physical availability if you're not there then you don't get the sale every day there are sales if you're not there you will lose that day's sales so what would you say about the brand's media strategies how does that contribute to that availability but the important thing is to get the things overlapping both before and after purchase i mean so often particularly when we buy a new brand we don't we don't really register what that brand was and it's only when we see the area oh that's that's that's the one that i just bought and that's enormously useful in laying down the mental structures for future purchases you'd think something would be very effective i mean you give consumers free product and if it's a good product they should adopt that into their repertoires but so often it doesn't because it doesn't lay down the mental structures the advertising uh needs to overlap with that physical availability both before and after purchase would you say then that the brand recognition on top of that physical and mental availability and i suppose that recognition builds on brand loyalty in the future we are very loyal we have all the millions of brands we could buy we keep going back to a few we're not passionately in love with those brands but we we love being loyal because it makes our lives easy but for me to be loyal to a brand the marketers need to i make it physically available to uh to me but they have to remind me that's that that's one of my brands it's not so much we have to fight for loyalty but we it's naturally there but we have to uh encourage it make it easy byron's perspective and search for filling physical availability in the digital world while also being a great place to build share of mind is something i hadn't considered before but i still want to know how brands can use search more effectively within their media mix how could it be more effectively used with other channels to achieve a range of business goals so i'm looking to connect with an expert in marketing measurement and optimization paul sinkinson is the managing director of analytic partners and has conducted extensive research into media mix effectiveness and how media channels can be synergized for optimal effectiveness for brands hi paul thanks for joining me with the messy middle getting even messier how can brands ensure they show up or they need to be the journey of exploration and evaluation the consumers go on today is much more messy and emotional with more eyeballs on screens and more decisions being re-examined the combination of more access to information and general re-evaluation has put more brands back on the table with brand loyalty under threat now is the prime time for brands to be present as consumers reassess and look for solutions to overcome the tensions and uncertainties so the key question is is your brand present at the right time in the right place when consumers need it most okay so we know that integrated multi-channel campaigns deliver how does search play a role so now we know that the journey is not linear and indeed it's a little bit messy it reinforces what we've been saying at analytic partners for some time brands need to be present on more than one touch point at a time now there's a couple of reasons for this one with more touch points you're likely to get more rich but you've got a greater chance for that to be more incremental reach and secondly the magic of synergy think of somebody seeing your billboard the day after seeing your tv ad it's that magic that drives a great result and we see that result across multiple channels in fact we see as you add touch points to a campaign as long as it's integrated you're going to increase roi for each one added that's more bang for buck with exactly the same spend just by unlocking the magic of synergy synergy is the unheralded hero of marketing effectiveness it's the very real time that one plus one equals more than two however those channels that are going to drive that synergy for you are often different it depends upon what you're doing so the search to find the right channel is key we see in the apac region that tv and search tends to have a synergy of 24 that's 24 more roi just by getting the magic of synergy together exactly the same budget we see it with search and other online video with a 13 bump just by unlocking that synergy so how can brands maximize the synergistic lift to maximize the synergistic lift make sure that you've got search going across the full marketing funnel have it at the top with the likes of brand and awareness but also bottom funnel activities trying to drive conversion it might make sense to focus on the short-term sales impact particularly with the pressure that we're all under to drive an urgent business performance however this comes at the expense of your always-on top funnel activity it can impact your long-term growth going dark for just a few months can destroy years of investment brand associations that you've held for a long time can be stolen by a competitor brand equity and brand health can be destroyed losing share of voice or in this case share of search can cost you a tremendous amount of budget and effort just to get back to the same point when you want to return to the market therefore allocate out your investment for the future as well as for the current don't just focus on the next three months focus on the next three years and make sure that we have funds allocated out for today and tomorrow paul's research convinced me that search should not just be seen as a standalone channel but rather as an integral piece of any multi-channel campaign search's value is not only in its unique position within the decision-making journey but in its incredible ability to deliver incremental benefits across a number of campaign goals channels and executions having spoken with paul and byron there is one more piece of the puzzle that i need what are the concrete actions that brands can take straight away to begin realizing the full potential of search in their campaigns so i turned to shefali nathan director of large customer marketing and events at google apec hi shefali wonderful to have you with me so i've gotten some good insight on why search works so well the big question that's left for me is how can brands get the most from it what's the secret to making search work for marketers well there is something pretty close to a secret that i can share but maybe let's start with an example first last year my parents celebrated their 50th anniversary and i wanted to throw them this huge party but obviously we couldn't travel so i had to do all the searching from singapore to find the best baker in delhi the best venue and the best dj and all these little details now most of the ads that i saw in searches were working from the last click i searched for catering in delhi i get ads for catering in delhi and that can work really well but what if a brand started thinking beyond the last click connecting the dots between the last search and previous searches then i'd be seeing ads for people just like me looking for catering for not just any party but an anniversary party in delhi in the heat of july that feels so much more personal and that is the secret to search the secret is understanding the customer's journey and helping them along that journey with ads that feel like they were written just for them it does feel like a completely different paradigm from the last click approach it really is i think it's easy for us as marketers to get too focused on the details the ad copy every single keyword and those are important no doubt but the story of search is so much more than that it really is a journey and the smart brands are using that journey to anticipate what customers will need even before the customer realizes it so i'm guessing that this way of thinking will appeal to a lot of viewers but it also sounds very complex because you're working on two fronts right trying to make things personal and trying to do that across billions of searches how do you do both i know that it sounds complex but in fact it's very simple it's the combination of what we call the maths and the magic i'll start where i think every brand should start and that's with the magic the magic is the connection the the meaningful connection that we make with customers and the way to get that connection is trust i can't stress enough how crucial this is i tell marketers that brand trust is now the most valuable asset even more than brand love and that's especially true after the pandemic by the way last year searches for phrases like is it true more than doubled in parts of apac wow that's incredible right and there are two sides to brand trust there's the obvious one that customers need to trust your content if you say that you're the best balloon company in delhi it's got to be true and it has to feel personal it can't be generic but there's also this other side to trust we want brands to respect our privacy too which is why i'm really glad google has built some impressive tools to aggregate and anonymize this data so that brands can target profiles of customers but do this in a very precise way trust does feel so important these days when i think about the brands that i trust the most and how much i've spent on their products over the years oh me too i think we all do okay so trust creates the magic what's the math the math is how google gets you that personalization at scale if you want to be there for every single journey you've got to really embrace automation because that's the only way to reach all your customers in the exact way they want to be helped and because working at scale like this is so much more profitable search can become one of your biggest growth drivers because the math and the magic makes so much sense and are so good for business i guess that's why i care so much about sharing the secret the secret to following the journey exactly the math and the magic such a great way of thinking about something that for a lot of brands seems to be incredibly complicated but as shafali said the truth is that it's easier than many think there are a number of brands across asia pacific who are already tapping into the incredible power of search to boost their businesses [Applause] hi my name is rachel thanh and i'm the head of digital and e-commerce for laurel looks which includes skills malaysia our natural skin care body and hair care brand the pandemic has drastically changed the daily routines of beauty consumers people are experimenting and changing up their beauty routines malaysian consumers for example turn to search to find at home solutions going as far as researching the best home facial treatments to add on to their usual personal care routines and when people are searching for beauty information and options we want our brand kills to appear on search and stay top of mind until they eventually make a purchase with us we recently explored how we could use search to broaden our new customer acquisition our driving insight was that consumers tend to use different search terms depending on where they are at in their purchase journey and in the research stage many would use generic terms like eibach serum or toner for oily skin whereas those who are further in the journey and already more familiar with our brand kills products that use more specific terms like best skills eye cream and so we wanted to know if using generic search keywords would unlock any untapped opportunities and create incremental difference in our search coverage and profitability so we partnered with google and our agency wave maker to devise and run two experiments across eight weeks on search in the first experiment we ran a campaign using only keywords specific to the kale's brand along with its unique products and services such as kale's avocado mask or kale serum and in the second experiment we added popular and broad search terms that often have a high reach alongside the brand and product keywords in our campaign for example we added terms like best anti-aging for men and skin care for acne skin [Applause] the results were truly amazing our website saw a 20 increase in traffic eighty percent of which were new visitors using generic keywords there was even a 27 uplift in transactions and orders and overall an 80 increase in overall our revenue this experiment clearly showed us how generic search keywords can really help to expand reach and capture potential consumers by building brand consideration at an early stage in the consumer purchase journey seeing the amazing difference it made we look forward to incorporating more search strategies in our marketing journey and achieving even better results it's an understatement to see that we live in a time of constant flux we're always discovering and processing new information from new sources that completely revolutionize the way we experience and view the world around us now that information is more democratic than ever before the decision journey is no longer just about finding information it's about finding information that is up to date relevant and reputable and for this people turn to search search is the nucleus of many people's research journeys it's a busy intersection of information that is visited and revisited many times as people go down their various roads to purchase it's indispensable for people across the world as physical availability in the real world has become less certain search has filled that void and now occupies a unique space in people's minds and shopping journeys for brands positioning themselves at the core of people's information journeys presents incredible opportunities to connect with consumers at multiple stages of their purchase journeys it allows brands to be helpful and establish trust and ultimately foster long-term connections loyalty and strategic growth through the nuances and ever-changing factors influencing search and the google ecosystem there are three key elements that arise as points of priority one leverage the power of trust people come to search for many different reasons and they trust search in this day and age the importance of trust cannot be overstated and there's an incredible opportunity for brands to show up with relevant messages to really help their consumers two consider the role of search in brand growth we heard from byron about how brands can consider search as physical availability for their products but brands should also consider how physical and mental availability interact and how they can use search effectively right across the full funnel three synergize research shows that your media mix is more effective when search is included so use that synergy to your advantage you search not only as a channel in its own right but as a complementary channel to others like online video and tv as always you can also reach out to your google representative for further information clarification or additional questions i'm christine amor levar and thank you for joining me on the coding decisions [Music] right so so so so so so so so so so so you