G5 Search Marketing Blog

Making the leap between online and offline, in the local market has become of paramount importance.

Sure, we harp on this a lot, but we’re not the only ones. In fact, there are many minds in the space who point out that any business, particularly on the smaller side, who want to make it to the next step, need to be making the move online.

And, well. They’re right.

We have consistently seen our clients succeed further as a result of moving their marketing efforts online.

And that is where ROBO comes in. This phenomenon, which stands for Research Online, Buy Offline is really the single most common occurence in the the local search market. And it’s growing at an extremely rapid rate.

Michael Boland, one of the preiminent analysts in the space, correctly points out that how and what works in Local Search, and the ROBO phenomenon, goes both ways:

“But the online/offline opportunity goes in the other direction as well. Brand marketing in offline traditional media is known to influence and drive search behavior, in some cases. Knowing this, Google has quietly initiated a charge to tie online and offline media together and track their influence on each other.”

That’s right, even Google is following our lead in tracking what works in the online and offline world. Of course, their efforts are in their infancy, whereas ours have been active for quite some time.

Oh, and just for fun, here is Boland talking about the ROBO behaviors and how, exactly, they play out:

“This plays out in a few important ways. Though search volume continues to rise and capture a growing percentage of product research, more than 95 percent of actual purchase behavior in the U.S. still takes place offline, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is especially true in certain service categories and products that are too bulky to ship or are dependent on a visual purchase decision (e.g., flat screen TVs).”

Tags: G5 Search Marketing, Google, Kelsey Group, Michael Boland, ROBO, Search Engine Watch

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under G5 Search Marketing Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.