In Advertising, Intent is EVERYTHING!

What is the goal of all forms of advertising? Branding, Sales, Education? The list is literally endless. It can however be simplified by one word that unifies everything. Action! All advertising has the goal of getting the viewer / listener / reader to take action. That action can of course take many different forms, from signing up for a newsletter, giving to a charity, or even making a purchase. Once we accept the goal of all advertising is essentially the same thing, it makes things much easier when we start to look at where best to place our advertising to generate our desired “ACTION”.

The placement options available to the budding marketeer are limited only by the imagination of the individual. So its little surprise that budgets are, more often than not, wasted. Conference Hotel room keys anyone? (Seriously I often wonder who has an ad budget so large they feel the need to test hotel key card demographics).

I’m all for testing new placements and new ideas as they develop, but the game hasn’t really changed in the last hundred years or so. Advertise where there is most “INTENT” to take our desired action. Got an airport car rental company? Guess what, advertising on airline booking sites on pages that cover your airports might be a good idea. Wedding photographer? Advertising on a local wedding planning site might work?

Seems obvious doesn’t it, yet so many companies ignore the obvious and instead chase the newest innovations. I love Peets Coffee, I mean seriously love Peets Coffee, but do I follow their twitter feed? No! But hey everyone needs a twitter account, right? This isn’t the time or place to get into social media and the misinterpretation of what is meant by marketing in that sphere. Hint: it’s not sponsored tweets.

Finding your niche

So where do we find intent? The simple answer is niche. Niche is where intent thrives. It’s important to remember, when people think niche, they generally think way too big. They confuse niche for market. There is a difference. A niche is a subset of a market. You need to think really small… Or perhaps more accurately focused.

Can you see where conflict might exist in a world which is dominated by comments like “Audience size is everything”, “Bigger is better”, “Who has the most market share wins”, and other such fairy tales? The smart marketeer doesn’t fall for this sort of media hype. The smart marketeer understands that all visitors are not alike. The key difference is? Yes you guessed it, INTENT!

What is intent?

Intent is the playing field leveller that no one wants to talk about. It’s far too easy to quote visitor numbers and membership statistics, why get into specifics which are potentially most useful to the marketeer?

Using the airline booking site as an example of niche. What is the intent of their typical visitor? I’m going to take a huge leap of faith and assume it’s the purchase of an airline ticket. Even if some visitors are searching on behalf of a relative or friend, they still represent that intent through a proxy. Its safe to assume a large percentage of visitors go on to purchase a ticket via that site (assuming the site in question represents a large enough cross section of the available marketplace).

Now let’s take another typical marketeer who’s focused on audience size and market share (see notes relating to airline booking site in the footer).

Our intrepid marketeer decides to mistakenly focus on market and not niche. Choosing to advertise on highly trafficked travel sites. People that travel after-all often rent cars don’t they?

In this rather obvious illustrative example, the intent of the travel site visitor is vastly different than one visiting an airline site. The list of intent for a travel site visitor is pretty much endless. Places to stay, where to eat, things to do, entertain the kids, etc.

Intent ratio

So let’s do some rather over simplified maths for a moment. Being generous lets say that 10% of people visiting a travel site have the intent of buying an airline ticket. Even if we completely ignore the geographical targeting offered by an airport booking site. That means we still need 10 visitors for every 1 booking site visitor to register the same level of intent.

In most industries the ratio of intent is vastly reduced the further you move away from the niche. Sure, TechCrunch and Mashable are incredibly useful sites for those keeping up with the latest technology developments. Their audience figures are in the millions and have legions of loyal fans. Those audience figures shrink dramatically however, once you apply an intent ratio to your product or service. Although you can safely assume most of their visitors are technically aware and most likely early adopters, how many are actually in the market for your product/service right at this moment? Generally as a rule, you would be lucky to get into single digit percentages.

So next time you read a headline about the latest hot app, platform, web site, [Insert here]. Ask yourself what’s the appropriate intent ratio to apply. That number will provide you with the first key metric to use when comparing rival placements. It’s the ultimate playing field leveller.

Note: OK so airline booking sites are a big easy example to use. Many of these sites represent the largest on the internet. So they actually fulfil audience and niche criteria. That’s unusual and only generally exists in a few search verticals. The others being retail, financial services and media / entertainment.

By James Ketchell