MARKETING
63% of Consumers Don’t Know How Search Results Are Categorized
A study of US consumers conducted this holiday season shows that many don’t fully understand what goes into ranking web pages in search results.
BrandVerity, an online brand protection company, found that 63% of consumers believe SERPs are ranked by either relevance or advertising spend, or they simply “don’t know” how results are ranked.
Only 37% of consumers understand that search results are ranked based on a combination of relevance and advertising spend. Though 31% say search engines aren’t doing a good job of indicating which results are ads.
That’s troubling when you consider 54% of consumers trust websites at the top of search results more than others. That means there’s searchers out there clicking on the first result, thinking it’s the most relevant, not realizing they’re clicking on an ad.
From a brand perspective, it’s important to be aware that advertisers can exploit consumers’ lack of understanding how search results work. For example, competitors can bid on a brand’s keywords and rank above the brand’s own website in the paid listings. Doing this, competitors can attract business from unsuspecting customers who are searching for the other brand.
With that said, BrandVerity encourages brands to be vigilant this holiday season:
“Competitors, bad affiliates looking to make quick commissions, and other bad actors will be working overtime to divert holiday shopping traffic their way. And make no mistake, the impact is significant. We found that 52% of consumers say they’ll sometimes purchase a competing product because it “also appeared in the search results” amongst the specific brand of product they searched for.”
Other Interesting Findings
Some other interesting findings from BrandVerity’s study include:
- US retail ecommerce spending is projected to rise as much as 13.2% to $135.35 billion.
- When searching for a specific brand, 56% of consumers say they start their search on Amazon, compared to 30% that say they start on Google.
- When not searching for a specific brand, 52% of consumers start their search on Google compared to 37% who turn to Amazon.
- 65% of shoppers do a “significant amount” of online research before purchasing a product.
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
MARKETING
More promotions and more layoffs
For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.
The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.
Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes
Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643.
Here are the median salaries by role:
- Senior management $199,653
- Director $157,776
- Manager $99,510
- Staff $89,126
Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.
One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%).
Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.
Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams
Employee turnover
In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”
Men and Women
This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.
In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.
Methodology
The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents.
Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.
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