On the 6th of October, GroupM Search, comScore and M80 revealed their study on how Social Media plays an intertwined role with search marketing, predominately in the Paid Search arena. The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between social media and its influences on search behaviour. Evidently the results from the research unveiled a dramatic correlation, whereby influenced brands discovered through social media saw a positive impact on their paid search activity, including lower-funnel searches (long tail searches) and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).

To put the whole study into a little more perspective, GroupM and the team looked at the background and opportunities between Social Media and Search to identify synergies. The plan was to explore:

• When consumers are exposed to social media and influenced social media, are they more likely to search, and, when they do, more likely to engage?

• Does social media exposure influence search behaviour by driving search queries further down the purchase funnel where consumers are more likely to convert?

• Is there a synergy between influenced social media and search marketing that drives better performance than search only? (more…)