Q: How can you say no to a $250 focus group? A: You can’t!
Last Monday, I trekked over to Advanced Focus after work to participate in a focus group that, based on the nature of my screening calls, I figured had something to do with Microsoft and search marketing.
I attended a Microsoft adCenter focus group about a year ago. Ultimately, the people behind the mirror wanted to know why we had deactivated our campaigns. It crossed my mind that I had been invited back to be asked the same question again: “You’re all here because you still haven’t reactivated your campaigns.” Uncomfortable pause.
I readied myself for the guilt. How would I explain to Steve Ballmer that his search traffic just doesn’t generate enough volume to make an impact? That his high-profile wooing of Yahoo read like an acknowledgment of this shortcoming? “Steve…you’re a really nice guy…you’re smart, well-dressed…the problem is…well…it’s not you, Steve…”
Cut to my rude awakening: Microsoft wasn’t interested in parsing my decision to pause my adCenter campaigns. No, they wanted to show me, and the three other members of my focus group, advertising creative, in order to gauge which campaign would be most likely to convince me to return.
I never signed a focus group NDA, not that I can remember. And my goal here is not to embarrass Microsoft by skewering their design team. But a foot massage, an egg timer, a packet of instant oatmeal and — wait for it — a wallet with money inside are all equally unlikely to convince me to flip the switch.
At the end of the day, what compels marketing folks to use search engine marketing as part of their online advertising mix is that it works. In my clients’ cases, that typically means that SEM must drive sales. But it doesn’t stop there. Even if adCenter gives us terrific ROI, if it’s not generating real revenue, it’s not worth it. The opportunity cost of managing a campaign that only leads to a few hundred dollars in revenue a day, or a week, outweighs the “literal” ROI.
I’m fairly certain none of my clients will ever have advertising budgets large enough to focus group their creatives. How do you measure the ROI of a focus group, anyway? Here’s an idea, Steve: take a tip from Ian Ayres, the guy who let Google Adwords data determine the title of his book. If you want to know how to market your search marketing product, why not use search marketing to find out?
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