Searching for "computers" on Google one January evening brought up a trove of hits on the usual suspects: Dell, Gateway, Apple and CNET. "Trucks" produced front-page links to Chevrolet and GMC, along with a sponsored tie-in to Nissan's bad-boy Titan King Cab.
So how about "banks"? Not a Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup, Chase or Wells Fargo turned up in the bunch. The most relevant hits, per Google's algorithms (and discounting sponsored links), were SunTrust Banks and Huntington National Bank-along with blood donation centers, the Outer Banks, NC, tourism bureau, and British science fiction novelist Iain Banks. Even in the paid- listings space that stayed within the bounds of financial services, Bank of America, HSBC, ING and Countrywide Bank had to share space and credibility with "Get-A-Bank-Account-Today.com," a last-chance specialist for check-bouncing scamps in trouble with ChexSystems.
Most financial institutions have taken a wait-and-wait-some-more attitude about tackling search engines and search-engine marketing, the hybrid practice of buying up keyword terms for paid search portal placements as well as hiring "optimizers" to ramp up a Web site's rankings on the free, organic page results. Few mid-sized or small banks are involved the space, say analysts. And while most of the large institutions are successfully deploying Webmasters and marketing agencies to tweak their page rankings, the use of mass-scale paid placements is not widespread.
In an example of banking apathy or lack of hustle, a report last fall from search-engine marketing and tracking firm SEMphonic showcased how major banks are clearly outflanked in mortgage-related searches, among the most in-demand and expensive terms up for bid with major search engines. "Larger banks and financial institutions are ... poorly represented in this space," according to a press statement from SEMphonic. Only Countrywide and Bank of America appear in the top 20 for combined paid and natural search results for "mortgage" and "home equity," trailing E*LOAN, LendingTree, and Bankrate as well as more obscure sites like 100bestlenders.com and comparefreequotes.com. Other institutions ranking in the survey were limited to Wells Fargo (21), Chase (41), a pre-merger Bank One (78), HSBC (96), Wachovia (149) and Citibank (188).
An anecdotal look at other keywords also shows banks' lack of presence, particularly through sponsored links on main search-engine pages. Googling for each of the top 25 U.S. banks finds that during one period, only five had paid links tied to a brand-name search. Entering generic financial terms, like "free checking" or "bill pay," brought up sponsored pitches from Emigrant Bank, Citibank and Wachovia, but also a preponderance of clickable invitations for specialists or portals like LendingTree or Bankrate that aggregate rates and services available from financial providers. Many financial searches (see "auto loans") are rife with subprime come-ons.
"There's just not much awareness of it at the moment," says Stephen E. Arnold, a Kentucky-based SEM consultant. "There's a pyramid of knowledge and the people who do the best job [at search] are at the bottom of the financial pecking order."
Search-engine marketing, however, is not completely off the radar of major banks. Citibank last year employed SEM and analytic tools to monitor search-keyword effectiveness as it drove up Web-based checking- account originations by 20 percent. Chase and BofA make their presence felt in credit-card searches. Wachovia is supporting its Texas expansion efforts with paid search ads along with landing first-page hits for "Texas checking" on Google and Yahoo!
Search-engine marketing executives say banks, even with the current paucity of use, represent one of the key growth markets for 2006. Spending trends for banks are difficult to come by, but industry tracking surveys put SEM spending for all financial services firms at between $1 billion and $1.2 billion in 2005. Spending in the financial services sector is between 13 percent and 20 percent of the estimated $5.7 billion invested in the search-engine-marketing arena, which is growing 33 percent a year, according to Forrester Research, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. Search-engine marketing is the biggest chunk-40 percent-of all on-line advertising revenue, expected to top $7 billion this year and peak at $11 billion by 2010. "It's really ramping up," says Justin Merickel, the finance-category manager for Yahoo! Search Marketing. "[Banks] see consumer behavior moving in that direction."
Google's financial services market manager Jon Kaplan says banks are now "starting to see the value of those users coming through this channel." He says many are attracted to the low per-customer acquisition costs of between $50 to $300 each, and "what they're finding is, in a lot of cases, these users are good [targets] for cross-selling."
Some other drivers probably include the skyrocketing costs and scarce inventory of available banner-ad space on top-draw sites like front pages for Yahoo!, MSN or AOL, and the declining interest in phishing-tainted e-mail marketing (DoubleClick last year reported that annual e-mail click-through rates declined from 11.8 to 10.3 percent). There's also the improved analytics and marketing campaign-management tools making SEM more effective and efficient, says TowerGroup senior analyst George Tubin. "Banks are getting much smarter," he says. "Some of the bigger banks are doing a much better job in understanding the value of buying search terms ... and measuring the effectiveness of these terms. They go to MSN and see they can actually measure what the click-through rate is on that term, and how many of those click-throughs actually turn into an open account."
Tools like Google's site-targeting platform, where an advertiser opts in for affiliate site placement through the AdWords program, are tightly focused on behavioral demographics. Kaplan says many banks are drawn to these drill-down systems that put them in front of the mass affluent, such as Web hangouts for golf fans or wine enthusiasts.
Microsoft plans to launch its MSN Search advertising program, adCenter, in June. AdCenter's capabilities are purported to offer an expansion of consumer demographics information and provide a single campaign and bid-management gateway for marketers-a product sorely missing in search marketing, according to Forrester. Most companies manage their bids by relying on manual data work using spreadsheets. Forrester reports MSN's paid search product "gives a glimpse of what paid search will look like in the future, where marketers can target ads based on demographics, behavior and even previous searches."
Being able to measure conversion rates and improve tracking of user habits builds on the diverse analytics search-engine companies have already built. Yahoo! and Google can geographically track the search engine user's origins, giving search-engine marketers better localized tools to offer banks. IP-geolocation capabilities mean a paid placement from LaSalle Bank is delivered to a Google or Yahoo! user in Chicago, but not Portland, OR.
The complexity of search-engine bid management in financial services is most obvious when examining the successful strategies employed by E*LOAN, which has one of the most effective search-engine reaches for mortgages. In a case study by Jupiter Research, E*LOAN adopted a portfolio-based approach for keyword bidding. ROI was measured against a collection of thousands of keyword combinations, rather than broken down for each possible verbal blend. E*LOAN discovered its brand name in combination with general search terms was effective with reach, and that rare but specific terms ("5-year ARM Seattle") could also yield excellent conversion rates.
Bidding is also complicated by the differing systems adopted by search-engine companies. Yahoo!'s Search Marketing program rewards the highest bidder for keyword search terms, whereas Google assesses ad-placement winners in a model measuring both bid price and ad appeal. An ad stands a better chance of being pulled up on Google as it attains greater click-through rates, says Kaplan. "We factor in how often users are clicking on your ad ... because we want those ads to be as useful and relevant as possible," he says.
As analytics improve search-specific performance, marketers will not only be able to optimize paid search bids against specific ROI targets, but to compare "unpaid" organic and paid search results-opening the door for more effective optimization of the free-listings wild card. Getting on the front page of free listings makes one king of the mountain. A Oneupweb study last year pronounced that a prime Google placement can bring a five-fold increase in Web traffic, and a 42 percent incremental increase in sales. Even a hit on the second page can improve daily visitations from under seven to more than 65. After the third page of results, the impact is almost nil.
How are banks improving optimization? It's no longer an equation of links-plus-keywords. Proprietary algorithms of search-engine companies are more complex and immune to the old tricks like hiding text in the background, and companies are increasingly intolerant of unethical methods to juice the rankings. Connecting to "link farms" is more apt to get a company's site excluded rather than shoving its way to the front page. Jeffrey Rohrs, president of SEM firm Optiem in Cleveland, says there are only certain strategies that work, and they usually accompany a paid-search strategy to be effective. Seven out of 10 click-throughs for his clients are from free listings, but "if you're in the paid listing, you have two places that people can click," says Rohrs, whose firm does interactive marketing assignments for National City. "Lots of studies show people don't even know the difference between the two."
Demand-deposit accounts are mostly being opened in branches, so the challenge is how to capture the success of a search-marketing program into the off-line world, he says. Optimization also requires in-house expertise to examine the results from a search marketing campaign. Because of the church/state nature of Google's search services, Kaplan's marketing team limits its optimization assistance. For banks, that can include uploading local index feeds for national banks' branches. "That's a big push for us right now," says Kaplan. "We're trying to get the most comprehensive local index of physical locations, so Bank of America, Chase, they obviously have thousands of branches and we want our users to be able to find those branches when they're searching on Google."
Forrester analyst Ron Shevlin says studies show only 15 percent of credit-card consumers go to more than five sites when comparing rates. "Its e-mail campaigns and direct-mail campaigns that are [still] creating awareness," he argues. "Banks and credit-card firms can go ahead and bid up the credit-card-related search terms all they want. It's no skin off their teeth as long as they are only paying 'x' amount for that lead. But if they are allocating funds away from direct mail and e-mail campaigns to pay for those search engines, then as a business executive, I've got an issue with this."
