As marketing leaders, succeeding in today’s evolving digital world requires adaptation. Advancements in technology present new opportunities to build bridges with consumers in more engaging and meaningful ways than ever before. Perhaps one of the most versatile and uniquely positioned tools available in today’s changing landscape is search. Like the versatile Swiss Army knife, search offers unique access, insights, and utility for marketing transformation in the digital age.

Chapter 1) Disruption: the new reality

Welcome to the world of rapid disruption. Organisations and businesses across the planet are facing disruption on a scale and pace never seen before in human history. Exponential advancements in technology have altered the way we experience and interact with the world. To grow and thrive in this new reality, marketers must traverse the digital divide by reaching customers across multiple screens with increasingly personalised experiences. The paradox of new technology is that while it can drive consumers away from the status quo, it can also bridge the gap between brands and their customers.

Throughout history, technological advances have profoundly disrupted the human and global environment. Today’s world is no exception to the rule. Just recently, leaders of the World Economic Forum have concluded that we are now on the cusp of a new revolution in which emerging technologies, characterized by unprecedented power to process, store, and access knowledge and information are blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological domains.

Adaptive organisations

Like any living thing, organisations must adapt to disruptions in order to survive. In the digital world, that means leaders must re-tool business practices and adopt new ways of bringing together people, data, and processes to create value for customers. But beyond merely surviving, how will we thrive? Perhaps the solution lies in the most versatile tool available to marketers: search.

“ The organisations that rise above the noise, who challenge the convention; the ones who are able to look left when others are looking right: they’re the ones that build better brands. They have the foresight and empathy to see through the eyes of their customers to quickly innovate and deliver differentiated products.” Jeff Hansen, GM, Brand Strategy at Microsoft

Chapter 2) Evolving with the digital consumer

Evolving consumers are changing the business landscape. No longer highly influenced by brand identification and labels, today’s consumers are increasingly inclined to move nimbly across digital platforms and between online experiences presenting marketers with uncharted opportunities and challenges.

Rise of the modern-day consumer

A new type of consumer has emerged out of the interconnectivity of devices and location independency. Equipped with an average of 3.64 devices, and an internet connection, they do not fit easily into traditional definitions. They do not display the habitual patterns of a fixed user who only consumes media at home, or of the mobile user who catches news on their smart phone while waiting for the train. Nomadic in nature, they want to use their devices anywhere and everywhere. They want convenience and convergence.

As a result, marketers now realize that success can no longer be measured solely in revenue models, but rather examined in the context of communities, where influence and reputation are experience-driven. In this changing economy brands must evolve along with their customers.

Propelled by social media, generational preferences, and an emphasis on authenticity, today’s consumers are changing how brands earn their loyalty and trust. For example, there is growing evidence that consumers are increasingly abandoning prior notions of brand loyalty in favor of more fluid online experiences. COLLOQUY research has shown that while consumers in the U.S. and Canada are still actively joining loyalty programs, participation in those programs continues to decline, with only 42% labeled as active members. As a response, many organisations are employing social listening tools to monitor and interact with customers over social networks to drive more authentic interactions and build customer loyalty.

While consumers in the U.S. and Canada still actively join loyalty programs, participation continues to decline with only 42% labeled as active members

Engaging the digital consumer

When considering the ever-more-integrated digital environment, great opportunity lies within the blending of the digital and the physical worlds to make great connections. Spain’s premier football club, Real Madrid, with a 450 million global fan base, was challenged with authentically engaging its fans within and beyond stadium walls.

“ Our goal is to profile all our supporters, to understand who they are, and to give them what they want from us, such as exclusive content, and bring them closer to the club.” José Ángel Sánchez, CEO at Real Madrid

Real Madrid partnered with Microsoft to digitally transform its enterprise by bringing fans one touch closer to their favorite football club, wherever they are. Fans can use the app to virtually access the stadium before, during, or after each game, and they can search data on all the club’s players, while also exploring detailed statistics from specific games. Real Madrid also built a tool to capture detailed information about fans, which it can use to engage with them more deeply. For example, the club can capture and discover personal preferences for providing more relevant content to that fan through the new mobile app.

Where once they were limited to a one-way communication platform, they now engage one-on-one with millions of fans and create near real-time marketing campaigns.

Experienced firms have learned that addressing touchpoints alone isn’t enough. Customer journey research by McKinsey and Company has shown that focusing on the customer experience as a series of multiple touchpoints leads to siloed efforts, which ultimately misses the larger picture of the end-to-end customer experience.

Telling a coherent brand story in a non-linear environment where consumers freely step in and out of experiences across devices poses a new challenge for marketers. Seamless storytelling requires integration of a brand’s message across all channels as well as thoughtful campaigns across screens, including TV. Exploring how search can capture the demand generated by other marketing channels to craft a brand’s story and engage at any point is vital. Especially when more people searching to investigate brands and verify their interests throughout their decision journey.

According to a recent article by Kerry Curran at Catalyst, Our goal is to profile all our supporters, to understand who they are, and to give them what they want from us, such as exclusive content, and bring them closer to the club.

“ 49 percent of consumers view search engines as their number one source to research a purchase and 74 percent trust search engines almost as much as they trust the website or brand they’re researching. This aligns with what we’re seeing with our clients. Not only are paid search budgets rising, our ability to continually increase business results by being present throughout the buying cycle is improving as well.” Kerry Curran, Senior Partner, Managing Director, Marketing Integration at Catalyst

Marketers can seize a huge opportunity to connect with consumers during large viewing events like the Super Bowl with a dedicated audience of over 111M viewers. Considering that 73% of Super Bowl 50 viewers plan to use two devices during the game, the accessibility of search through their devices during commercials can guide them in their buying decisions. The mega marketing dollars spent on Super Bowl ads provide hefty ROI when implemented correctly and in concert with other media in these key moments.

Right now, there is a disproportionate number of marketers utilizing search in their channel mix compared to the number of people relying on search every day. In fact, 55% of marketers aren’t using search in their marketing mix at all, even though roughly half of people view search engines as their number one source to research a purchase. This represents a missed opportunity, especially when we consider the consumer is toggling between multiple channels as they make decisions.

49% of consumers view search engines as their number one source to research a purchase.

74% trust search engines nearly as much as they trust the website or brand they’re researching.

Continually increasing business results are fortified by rising paid search budgets.

As it becomes increasingly important to engage with consumers across screens, there is one user interface that is growing particularly fast with younger generations. The renown KPCB Internet Trends report delivered by Mary Meeker in 2016 made special note of an evolution in messaging platforms. As the potential for messaging apps to become the second home screen continues to grow, marketers should consider the advancement of more conversational user interfaces and the impact they will have on the consumer decision process. One of the fastest growing messaging apps is Kik, a free mobile app with nearly 300 million people who have signed up in over 230 countries around the world. AdWeek reports that 81 percent of Kik’s registered users are between the ages of 13 and 25. Teens prefer Kik because it allows them to do more than just type written messages. It makes it easy to add video and pictures to a text, creating a more dynamic messaging experience.

Shifting consumer behavior coupled with breakthrough advancements in natural language processing by leading technology giants presents a host of opportunities for marketers to generate a new view of the customer experience – one that is more natural and human.

Younger consumers conduct their digital lives through a myriad of social apps, such as iMessage, Instagram, and Snapchat. As convergence towards messaging platforms increases, brands need to start thinking about how they can meet their customers where they are, rather than expecting customers to come to a branded app experience. Brands need to figure out how to naturally become a part of these conversations, and increasingly we see more marketing organisations starting to experiment with chatbots; computer programs that talk with, and like, humans.

Bots are poised to become an integral part of peoples’ digital experience, creating relationships between brands and consumers with less friction and greater value. In social situations, this can be illustrated well. Picture a few friends planning an evening out to celebrate a birthday. They want to find a venue that has lots of buzz so they ask Cortana for options of restaurants that serve fusion cuisine that can accommodate a large group of up to 20. Cortana then provides multiple options including basic information like location and hours of operation as well as more useful information like menus, photos, websites and reviews. From here they are able to select a few they like and then refine their decision based on when they want to make reservations. Cortana interactively assists in contacting the restaurants’ bot in real time to easily provide options based on true data. The friends can now book their celebration with less time spent researching, calling around and visiting multiple sites and focus on the fun.

In China, there is a chat bot called Xiaoice, built by Microsoft, that over 40 million people talk to.

Then consider the human factor and the emotional relationships that a bot can foster between brands and consumers. Xiaoice, an artificially intelligent chat bot developed by Microsoft for the Chinese market has a compelling personality and over 40 million users. The public response to Xiaoice has been remarkable. After just three days, she was added to 1.5 million conversations on China’s popular app WeChat. She develops intricate relationships with users by inserting herself intelligently into conversations and recalling previous chats. But the real revelation is her perceived empathy, sense of humor, and personal identity. You can introduce her to your dog through a photo, she’ll recognize the breed and ask for updates; or if you tell her about a recent break up, she’ll check in on you.

Xiaoice has become a household name and a bonafide celebrity, endorsing products and providing weather updates on local news channels. For the millions of people who use her regularly—who feel they have befriended her, know her, and love her—the emotional connection is decidedly real. Users’ attachment and identification with Xiaoice provides a glimpse of the potential power of bots to enable marketers to create deeper, more personal relationships with customers, in new and unexpected ways.

Innovations in augmented and mixed reality also surface unique opportunities to build bridges between consumers and brands. For example, by leveraging graphically sophisticated visual overlays that deliver immersive experiential dimensions, wearable headset devices have the potential to impact customer actions, including how they search for, consider, and make decisions about purchases. New headsets coming onto today’s market can populate a viewer’s visual field with fully interactive 3D models, characters, and other images, and are anticipated to become a $162 Billion global market by 2020 according to International Data Corporation.

The overlay of experiential dimensions expands the realm of creativity for building robust customer experiences. Say a recently married couple is combining households and needs to make some new furniture purchases. There are several questions they now should ask. Will the furniture fit in our space? Will it complement our existing décor? Will we like the color? By using interactive 3D web publishing to test products from the browser directly into their living room, the couple can make their decision confidently knowing all options were explored and questions answered right in their own home. As these technologies become integrated into the everyday lives of the consumer, product searches like these are poised to significantly alter the way users interact with search engines.

“ When we use big data, I think the most important thing is if we take the signals of what someone is interested in, and then marry that with the identity of who they are. That allows us to build custom content. Using this data to have custom content for people, predicated on who they are and what they’re interested in that moment, is going to be key.” Jason Hartley, Vice President, US Search Lead at 360i

Applying the digital fingerprint

IBM has noted that every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data at such a high velocity that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. The accessibility, precision, and breadth of consumer data available today has created unprecedented opportunities for marketers to build our understanding of audiences. As consumers move nimbly across digital platforms, they leave unique digital fingerprints, producing mountains of data that are incredibly valuable, yet can easily overwhelm any marketer.

However, there can be a trade-off between attaining the personally identifiable information being shared and keeping up with rising consumer expectations around quality of experience. So how can marketers best leverage all of this high-value data like online purchases, browsing behavior, and social media interactions to create a customer experience that is, in return, more personal, engaging, and memorable?

By understanding the difference between raw data and the valuable insights it can deliver, today’s marketing leaders are implementing systems that leverage data to help paint a picture of who their customers are. From there, marketers can tailor content to create more personalized experiences.

And marketers must do all of this while respecting customer privacy. Creating trust and treating customers respectfully go hand-in-hand with establishing productive, engaging relationships that live on. Here are just a few widely-acknowledged good practices for dealing with customers around data collection and usage:

• Provide your privacy disclosure terms
• Be sensitive to the customer’s perceived sense of being tracked
• Give customers some input (such as opt-in or opt-out choices) so they can reasonably set expectations on the collection of their personal information
• Evaluate what is and isn’t the most useful data to collect, and limit yourself to key data that serves your best needs
• Make sure you have staff with expertise in data collection and security
• Understand your responsibilities for keeping your and your customers’ data safe

Chapter 3) Search: marketing's multi-functional tool for the digital age

While search has always been in the marketer’s back pocket, its position as a multi-functional marketing tool holds tremendous potential. What are the elements of search that make it so uniquely valuable compared to other marketing instruments? Like the versatile Swiss Army knife, search offers unique access, insights, and utility for marketing in the digital age.

Inside the everyday

Search has evolved beyond a box on a browser page to become an omnipresent tool in everyday lives of both consumers and marketers. It is an intelligence platform that straddles the range of customer experiences.

Devices from smart phones, to gaming consoles, to cars, now integrate search into their core functionalities so that consumers can access the information and experiences they care about instantly.

Bing is part of the everyday experience woven across the Microsoft ecosystem, including Windows 10, Cortana, Xbox, and, Office, as well as through partner ecosystems including integration in both Apple’s iOS and MacOS, as well as a variety of integrations through Amazon. With Windows 10 now powering over 400 million active devices, its deep integration across all ecosystems now contributes to over 45 percent of all searches.

As search becomes increasingly pervasive, Bing’s knowledge and action graph is coincidingly enriched with more and better consumer intent signals. Going forward, digital personal assistants like Cortana and Siri will be able to tailor the search experience to a customer’s individual needs in the context of a specific moment. For things like planning a viewing party, your personal assistant would pull in a bot for a local pizza shop or food delivery service, providing convenience and simplification of ordering, while catering to your personal preferences.

Insights driven by intent

For years, paid search was seen as merely a channel centered around clicks, gathering the greatest click volume as efficiently as possible. Today, however, search intent is one of the most powerful data signals available. What makes search so unique is that it’s the single most intent-based channel available to marketers.

As search continues its expansion as an intelligent thread across devices, marketers can use those intent signals for valuable insights into the people behind the clicks.

Many marketers overlook the fact that search is valuable for understanding the entire consumer decision journey, and has utility far beyond just capturing the last click. Consider homeowners investigating their energy needs. Search intent lets you discern whether a someone wants to learn about solar panels in general, versus looking to invest in them, versus actively installing them on their house. By leveraging search intent, a marketer in the solar business is uniquely positioned to respond to a customer with contextualized content delivered at just the right moment.

Predictive possibilities

The intent data from search enables the world to unlock a new realm of possibilities. Today Bing applies machine-learning to its vast knowledge and action graph – filled with public sentiment towards trending searches and social media topics – to make informed predictions about various events such as the next American Idol or the Australian Open champion. In the commercial space, the Cortana Intelligence Suite with Bing Predicts augments enterprise data with Microsoft’s search, social, and web data sets to create targeted solutions, such as improved demand forecasting and public sentiment analysis for consumer products.

The potential for search-based predictive analytics can be groundbreaking. Researchers are using Bing searches as an early warning signal for people suffering from pancreatic cancer. Currently the 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just 3 percent. This methodology more than doubles that survival rate to 7 percent by looking for signs in search behavior that might identify people with the cancer. Estimates suggest that from 5 to 15 percent of pancreatic cancer patients could be discovered this way, with an accuracy rate of just 1 in 100,000 false positives. With the number of new cases of pancreatic cancer rising every year, it’s a powerful new tool for saving lives.

Imagine the possibilities this type of methodology can unlock for marketers. Utilizing search intent for predictive intelligence could profoundly change the way we understand consumers.

Chapter 4) The transformative marketer's guide to search "Swiss Army knife"

There are some key steps marketers should take to get the fullest advantage from the versatile tool that is search. These actions will enable us to fend off challenges, embrace opportunities, and enhance the customer experience in this transformative digital environment.

Reframing from search as an operational tool to search as a strategic asset

The digital world has created a consumer expectation for enhanced experiences, and search should work in service of putting the customer at the center of any marketing strategy. This is important because by putting ourselves in the mind of our customers, we no longer see search as just a channel; we see it as a critical component of the decision-making process.

Today’s marketing leaders are beginning to think about search teams and agencies more centrally, as consultants who leverage search to develop a customer engagement strategy across the entire marketing organization.

At the same time, agencies that got their start solely in the search game continue to widen their scope, realizing that search can no longer function in a vacuum. These agencies are using a search-driven mindset and applying their knowledge to understand how search can be an invaluable component, connecting into all marketing channels. Consider everything that feeds into a single customer experience; then think about how the powerhouse of search intent data can take a marketing plan from message testing to a “higher intelligence” out-of-home execution, and even to custom content creation.

There is also a surge of critical new talent coming into search itself. Search is no longer a field one enters to become a channel owner; it’s increasingly the start of a fruitful, data-driven marketing career. This new crop of talent is intellectually curious, and actively craves the holistic marketing challenges that currently plague many marketing leaders. Ask Jeff Campbell, Managing Director for Resolution Media and he’ll tell you:

“ ...when we think about search talent, we want someone who can balance the science with the art. The best candidates for search talent need to be able to think like a consumer, and about that consumer path, that journey. They should have an understanding of how data can work with the activities of the human mind, and how it can track across all the different channels and devices that consumers are using.” Jeff Campbell, Managing Director at Resolution Media

Organizations that seek out data-driven marketers with this kind of search talent will be the most successful in adapting to the current landscape.

Taking advantage of tools and insights available today

Search is an engine of insights that can be leveraged to gain a holistic picture of the consumer. Set your organization up in a way that gives search a seat at the table, so that insights can be easily and routinely turned into intelligent action across the enterprise. You can use the data associated with your search team’s keyword lists to learn from and listen to what people are searching for online as it relates to your brand. The customizable Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool helps marketers quickly identify the most effective ad groups and keywords to boost campaign performance. These suggestions are derived from Bing’s rich insights based on historical trends and marketplace competition.

Cross-functionality is another key organizational principle, as teams work more closely and interdependently than ever before. Andrew Davidson, Senior Partner and Managing Director overseeing search and social for North America at Mindshare, explains how his organization shares insights between cross functional teams.

New collaboration tools continue to crop up every year, each promising greater productivity for the modern enterprise. For example, Microsoft Teams is a new offering that combines a chat experience like Skype to the full breadth and depth of Office 365, so that teams can fluidly collaborate in one platform.

“ The barriers to search or social within the digital landscape have almost completely disappeared. We’re able to illustrate, at a very granular level, the value of that data and how it could affect both media and overall results. Search and social are fully engaged within our teams across planning and buying to the point where teams are fully integrated in all aspects. This includes weekly planning meetings and when discussing budget and strategy.” Andrew Davidson, Senior Partner, Managing Director at Mindshare

Even with a great cross-functional marketing team in place, we know that online purchases are often conditional. Remarketing can help create relationships with customers throughout their decision journey by re-engaging people who have interacted with your brand on any of your channels. Even though 76.6% of people abandon online shopping carts, these fickle shoppers can become high-value customers. Remarketing through search can give a brand a second chance to connect and entice a lapsed customer with subtle reminders.

Remarketing goes well beyond just following users along their purchase journey and encouraging them to buy a product. It can also be used to exclude those who have already purchased, engage users in early consideration phases, as well as reconnect with current customers for cross-selling opportunities. Marketers can also create unique remarketing audiences based on how consumers have interacted with their other marketing channels.

It’s helpful to think of customers as they navigate through their personal lives. Where are they during the day? When are they shopping? What are they doing this time of year? Marketers have always asked these questions, but with the robust capabilities of current search data, the ease and granularity of targeting continues to grow and advance.

“ We have to remember we’re not selling to data. We’re selling to people. And people’s definition of “perfect” continuously changes. So, even if we find the data that lets us do the perfect marketing right this instant, it won’t work. By the time we act on that data, “perfect” slips away.” Ian Lurie, CEO, Founder at Portent, Inc

Inspiring a culture of experimentation and incrementality

It’s not uncommon to see marketers chase perfection with imperfect data. That’s because the pressure to deliver business results is greater than ever, and the vast amounts of data available are growing at a faster rate than we can pull it all together into a single view. The notion of stability, where we have all the data we need to make a near perfect decision, has been effectively dismantled. Ian Lurie CEO & Founder of Portent, Inc., a Seattle-based integrated digital marketing agency, states:

To stay competitive, a mindset around rapid incrementalism becomes the new normal in today’s marketing landscape. By building an organizational mentality around testing, and by learning step by step, marketing leaders can build breakthrough customer experiences.

However, with ongoing pressure to deliver strong returns on every marketing dollar, not every organization can continually invest in robust brand studies, deep competitive analysis, and other research investments with third parties. Marketers must focus on nimble and cost efficient testing grounds, and should be testing on those often. With search engine marketing (SEM), targeted, controlled experiments can be run efficiently to test and validate tactics including audience segmentation, new messaging, new branding, and new pricing. Search is the perfect testing laboratory because it allows us to iterate on the fly and get quick learnings across the organization.

The Bing Network tends to have lower cost-per-clicks than Google across many key verticals20. Using a similar auction dynamic as Google’s AdWords auction. Reservations.com, a worldleading online hotel booking website, has experimented with call extensions to give customers a convenient way to call directly from search results while seeing an overall 10-15% lower cost per click (CPC) over Google and 18% higher ROI21. The combination of more efficient clicks and better ad positioning compared to competitors makes Bing’s advertising platform a premium testing ground for marketers.

Investing in the future of search

The future of search may come sooner than expected, and marketers need to think about adjusting to meet consumer expectations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving to understand user intent and context based on criteria such as previous searches, multiple step searches, and user behavior. As intelligent agents are increasingly integrated into apps and products, and consumers build greater trust in those agents, brands have more ways to deeply connect with consumers in a way that is more experientially human.

According to comScore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Voice search is more conversational as if one person were asking another person a question, therefore brands need to consider the use of natural language as they light up their marketing channels. Early preparation for this evolution doesn’t necessarily require tremendous investment, and can be as simple as experimenting with interesting tools such as www.answerthepublic.com, a free online resource that creates quick visualizations of consumer insight based on search data. Just type in a word or phrase, select a key market, and it delivers a range of suggested questions that can serve as insights into which questions a brand can be answering. By taking an answer-based approach, your marketing strategy can start to be experienced as more human.

People are also inherently driven by visual stimulation. As more visual-centric technologies emerge in various forms like virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, consumers crave more visually immersive experiences. Coupled with machine learning, AI can even potentially create a search experience that is virtually keyword-less. Brands can begin to prepare by boosting their visual appeal. According to Pixel Road Designs, research has shown that consumers are 80% more willing to engage with content that includes relevant images23. Steps as small as adding color can help generate more sales according to a study by Xerox24. Marketing leaders should ensure their brand’s visual appeal is both cohesive and attractive across the board.

By 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human.

The potential for bots to deliver more integrated consumer experiences in conversational user interfaces should influence marketers to explore how their brands can add value in this context. Today, brands are starting to experiment with Microsoft’s bot framework, a comprehensive offering to easily build and deploy high quality bots on any platform. The Bot Framework provides everything needed to build, connect, manage, and publish intelligent bots that interact naturally wherever users are talking—from text/sms to Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Office 365 mail and other popular services. Consider the commercial opportunities here. Gartner has been noted to predict that by 2020, the customer will manage 85 percent of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human25. And marketers without extensive developer resources do have options. For example, Microsoft has a tool—qnamaker.botframework.com—that can be used to develop a bot that can answer customer FAQs. All you need is an FAQ either in the form of documents or web pages, which most brands have readily available.

Choosing partners who will help navigate the ever-changing digital landscape

Search is changing and all marketers should be dynamically evaluating who they are partnering with, not only to adapt, but to thrive. The velocity at which the digital landscape is changing requires marketers to maintain and tinker with a diversified marketing strategy. In some cases, relying on strategic partnerships to simply keep up. When evaluating marketing partners, here are some important considerations:

Different consumers are engaging with various platforms in multiple ways. A plan that works for one platform may not exactly translate to another, so consider partners who prioritize making their marketing platforms work for you. Savvy marketers who leverage Bing Ads resources are constantly testing to unlock new optimization opportunities, and are empowered to share results and feedback through extensive loops feeding into Bing Ads engineering teams. Partners who provide multiple opportunities and open forums for user feedback are the ones that are committed to riding the wave of digital transformation with their customers.

Future success is driven by the strategic investments we make today. The partners who are innovating for the future and actively sharing their vision with the organization are the ones in a better position for connecting brands with the consumer of tomorrow. Microsoft places envisioning centers and events around the globe to provide customers with a glimpse into its view on how technology can empower people and organizations in the future. With extensive experience partnering closely with top enterprises around the world to navigate the modern digital landscape, Microsoft has built a trusted voice and can meet organizations where they are on the path towards their own digital revolution.