What's easier: give people your web address or ask them to Google a phrase such as "Where can I find the UK's cheapest cars?"
I've blogged before about the trend in some advertising towards giving people phrases to Google rather than asking them to remember a web address to visit. Martin Belam has spotted another example, this time a newspaper advert for CarGiant.co.uk which pushes people towards Googling that phrase. In some circumstances asking people to remember a phrase to Google, rather than a web address, is a good idea.
But in this case, as he says:
I just can't get my head around what happened in the meeting where they decided "search for 'where can I find the UKs cheapest cars'" was a catchier marketing message than "search for 'cargiant'" or just drilling home 'visit cargiant.co.uk'.
If you actually google that phrase you get this page and no mention of cargiant
[...] It was then followed up by Mark Pack in his post: Where can I find the UK's cheapest cars? [...]
Looks like they are building the cheapest used cars message and doing a good job. They are well ranked for most searches around cheapest used cars and that can’t be a bad thing. Or can it?Cheap is a very transactional word, but on used cars it tends to focus consumers towards the lower end of the market ie under £3000. So if they have plenty of cars under £3000- great message. However they only have 37 cars in stock under £4000 out of a stock of over 2000 cars, so most of their effort will be wasted. My own research and expereince shows that 90% of users on these type of keywords are looking at sub 3k cars. Interestingly on new cars, cheap doesn’t focus towards any given price band, as all new cars have a fixed starting price and it is a good way of differentiating the best deal from the worst deal. On used cars cheap actuall means low priced! So cheap new is goodCheap used is just cheap