A Clickz article titled “Is Your Search Marketing Campaign Lopsided?” takes a look at how demographics affect search engine marketing.
It says that “depending on the demographics of your target online audience, your SEM campaign may require more emphasis on paid over natural SEM strategies, or the reverse.”
Why? Well, according to the study cited in the article:
- Women find paid search advertisements more relevant than men.
- Searchers with college degrees select natural search results as being more relevant to a sample query.
- Unemployed searchers choose a natural search result as more relevant over half of the time.
- Users who indicate they use the Web four or more times per day, 65.2 percent click on the natural search listings.
- Individuals who have been online longer find natural search results to be more relevant.
So, it could be inferred from the data that if your audience is male, has been online over three years, has a college degree and is fully employed, being found in the natural search results takes on more importance.
Conversely, if your audience is female, new to the Internet, and non-degreed, you may need to skew your campaign more toward paid search ads.
