There is an old adage that says that “all news is good news.” This was never truer than in search engine marketing and yet, companies like Circuit City persist in wallowing in the bad without reaping the good. Circuit City announced this morning that they are filing for bankruptcy. This is becoming more common in our post-economic boom landscape with many retailers feeling the pinch of reduced consumer spending. However going bankrupt is no excuse for missing out on an opportunity to gain customers.
Consider this:
The search term “circuit city bankruptcy” ranked in the top 10 on Google tends all day. What did those searchers see? A lot of news stories on the bankruptcy filing. Now I’ll grant that a good chunk of that traffic were shareholders looking to see just how much of a hole was just blown into their portfolio. Another group of searchers are undoubtedly concerned about their jobs either at Circuit City or at another company that relies on them. Still, It’s a good bet that another chunk of searchers were folks like me who thought “Sounds like an ideal time to pick up that Sony flatscreen I’ve been dreaming about.” Especially in this environment there are a lot of bargain hunters looking for a great price on almost everything imaginable.
It may sound crass but the best way of preserving jobs and emerging from their financial straits is by goosing sales. A paid search ad directing users to Circuit City bankruptcy bargains would scoop up a good segment of those searchers and deliver them (and their much-needed cash) to Circuit City.
Sadly it may already be too late for Circuit City to reap the full rewards. The peak volume for this story is at the time of the announcement – a good marketing campaign would have been ready to go within minutes to capture the inevitable interest. The more time passes from the company statement, the lower the search volume and interest. The key is to be prepared for the bad news so that an immediate response can be initiated.
This reinforces the importance of making search marketing a key feature of corporate communication. Let your search team in early enough in the decision making process to formulate a way to make lemonade out of the sour taste of bankruptcy. After all, every extra purchase counts.
A Bankruptcy Response SEM campaign doesn’t get approved overnight at a large company like CC. It seems that you are living in some kind of SEM-centric fantasy world and not in the real-world where CC execs are consumed with more important issues like bankruptcy & job security. In addition, what good would a Bankruptcy Response campaign really do – further deplete consumer confidence?
Just because a company files for Chapter 11 doesn’t mean that they have a fire sale. If you go CC.com, you can see that there are no special Bankruptcy Promotions/Sales. The company isn’t liquidating it’s only filing for protection.
I feel that the quality of SearchViews posts have diminished of late. It used to be more about innovations and insights rather than trite commentaries. In sum, I’m bored of reading recycled ideas about evangelizing search. Sure themes are good but do I have to read the same drivel every time a company faces Bankruptcy or negative PR – this is not interesting nor does it make me want to come back for more? I think that your attempt at cutesy social & pop-cultural commentary is overshadowing your goal of providing “daily insights”. Give me SEM News and Updates. Give me insider perspective to managing large scales SEM campaigns for fortune 100 clients. Give me real-world business insights and blunders. Give me fresh content and ideas. And, please stop giving me crap to read.
Hi Mom!Looks like I’ll be doubling up on my therapy sessions this week! In all seriousness though, first things first:
Whether or not CC or any other company is having a sale related to their bad news – the bad news is out there and people are searching for it – why not turn a negative into a positive? Companies continue to miss these opportunities and to me each one is a case study in how to deal with bad news right. To me, that’s a real-world insight into a real-world blunder. If I seem SEM centric, well, the name of the blog is SearchViews after all and Search Marketing is what we do.
Some people won’t like my style and point of view and some people will. Just as the “Search” part of our name means our natural focus will be on how an SEM can and should do things, the “Views” part means that each of us who posts will be delivering a personal point of view and voice on many topics.
In short – I won’t please everybody and that’s OK.
OK, Noah point taken – CC didn’t capitalize on a missed opportunity.
My real qualm is that this post lacked substance. Your “View” on CC’s “Search” response articulated the problem while failing to provide a comprehensive, sound solution. Shouldn’t you be leveraging Reprise Media’s vast expertise to outline a detailed response strategy?
In sum, this article touches on who, what and why but misses on how and when. It’s these last 2, how and when, that will provide (me) the real insight.
I think the solution is beyond, in a sense what a search marketer can do from outside, and perhaps that wasn’t a clear enough point in my original post. This is an institutional issue that speaks to the traditional walls these companies build between their financial teams and their marketing and even public relations teams.
Rather than viewing issue of corporate governance as being non-material from the need to generate sales I would argue that they both have the same goal – generate revenue/keep the company alive/reward shareholders (if the company is public).
Opportunities like the CC one are missed all to often because of this disconnect.
What an outside marketer can do is to point to this as a missed opportunity and try to inculcate new thinking around the role of marketing – specifically search – in business governance as a whole.