Written by Jim Bonfield for the Prosper Magazine “Business Blog”
August 2005
Good luck finding a Sacramento Furniture Store using Google or Yahoo!
I, like many other Sacramento area consumers I assume, went online this past weekend to research furniture that I could then buy, in a local furniture store.
To my great surprise, even our more familiar, big time advertisers, and well-known Sacramento area furniture stores, were almost completely missing from my search engine results. (One of the most persistent local marketers, Room Source, appears to not even have a web site – let alone first-page links on Google.)
I became curious and set to work figuring out how many other local area furniture retailers might also be missing. (I am NOT an investigative reporter, but I play one online.)
It was, as I had feared… (Cue: dramatic music…)
Local Online Invisibility Syndrome (LOIS as the white coats back at Left Brain Laboratories call it…)
A quite, bottom line-killer, taking advantage of otherwise well-meaning marketing departments across the Sacramento Valley. Clearly, she was continuing her silent-sweep through our local business community, and virtually un-checked.
Terrifying, but curable, if caught in time. (I’m not a doctor either, or a comic as you can tell. Sorry.)
The list we examined:
The list was chosen randomly and consists of mostly residential, indoor and outdoor, stores. It is in no way a scientific sampling of the many, many furniture retailers we have in the area. It is possible that others, not listed here, may rank better.)
America's Mattress
Barstools and Dinette Factory Outlet Stores
Barstools and Dinettes of Sacramento
Beck’s Furniture
Bellach’s
Burkett's Office Furniture
California Backyard
Copenhagen Furniture
Design Galleria by Valentine
Drexel Heritage
Emigh's Casual Living
Ethan Allen Gallery
Go To Your Room
Jon's Home Furnishers
La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries
Limn Furniture
Macys
Mattress Discounters
McCreerys
Naturwood Home Furnishings
Pottery World Home Décor
Sleeptrain Mattress Centers
Tuscany Home Furnishings
Here is a brief overview of what I found when looking at these Sacramento Furniture Stores from a search engine perspective.Yahoo! reported the following terms as among the most frequently used furniture-related search-terms used last month. (July 2005)
furniture
bedroom furniture
kid furniture
furniture store
baby furniture
discount furniture
computer furnitureThese terms were searched for 1,861,395 times! Just on Yahoo’s! network, and just during that one-month. (Meaning the much larger search engine, Google and the over 100 smaller engines we often use for our clients, were not counted in that number.)
It’s true that as of yet, there aren’t many of us getting a couch by UPS delivery…
However, Online-Furniture-Researchers very often turn into Local-Furniture-Buyers.
The Kelsey Group (A research firm based in Princeton, N.J.) found that
some 27% of online searches conducted by U.S. consumers are aimed at finding local goods and services..
Make sure you really get that.This means that 1-in-3 searches done by Sacramento area Internet users may be done by your potential customers looking to buy goods and services from you or a competitor. (Possibly more now, as that report was done in 2003.)
From the Furniture Experts…Furniture Today recently reported on how important the Internet has become for local furniture stores – sharing details of a recent study done by Dieringer Research Group, they pointed out the following…
- In the fourth quarter of 2004,
11.7 million shoppers researched furniture online before making a purchase at a local store- It is estimated that
76.4 million U.S. consumers made offline purchases impacted by online information during 2004, up 27% from the prior year.
The Dieringer survey found that
75% of shoppers who researched home furnishings online said they had made a local shopping trip within the week following their online research.
So, where do shoppers get this online furniture shopping information?
(Furniture) Retailer Web sitesMen: 76%
Women: 82%
Major Web search engines76%
80%Manufacturer Web sites46%
53%
Mail-order catalog sites22%
33%
Popular Web destination shopping sites28%
32%
Shopping comparison sites26%
31%
Web portal shopping sites17%
24%
E-mail promotions16%
22%
Product review/opinion sites
18%
21%
Online Yellow pages
13%
21%
Web sites that specialize in local store sale information5%
8%
Source: The Dieringer Research Group, 2005 U.S. Web2Store Benchmark Survey – (Full article:
http://www.furnituretoday.com/article/CA630534.html?text=online Note: registration may be required.)
Almost all of them are using the search engines, the one place the local furniture guys can’t easily be found. Who’s actually reaching these local customers then?Remember those popular furniture search terms I mentioned? Well, I ran those terms against the list of Sacramento area furniture retailer web sites to see how they would fare. What I looked at was how “visible” each store would be if a searcher used those terms plus the word “sacramento” on Yahoo or Google
Given most searchers rarely look past page-1 of search engine results, I only examined those rankings. (These sites may appear in pages 1 through 1,600,000 that Google produced – I don’t know. Tell me if you find out.)
The Sacramento-area Furniture and Home Furnishing store web sites used in the test:
http://www.norcalmattress.com/America's Mattress
http://www.barstooloutlets.com/Barstools and Dinette Factory Outlet Stores
http://www.daytonbarstools.com/Barstools and Dinettes of Sacramento
http://www.becksfurniture.com/Beck’s Furniture
http://www.bellachs.com/Bellach’s
http://www.burkettsoffice.com/Burkett's Office Furniture
http://www.californiabackyard.com/California Backyard
http://www.copenhagenfurniture.com/Copenhagen Furniture
http://www.designgalleriabyvalentine.com/Design Galleria by Valentine
http://www.drexelheritage.com/Drexel Heritage
http://www.emighscasualliving.com/Emigh's Casual Living
http://www.ethanallen.com/Ethan Allen Gallery
http://www.gotoyourroom.net/Go To Your Room
http://www.jonsfurniture.com/Jon's Home Furnishers
http://www.lazboy.com/La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries
http://www.limn.com/Limn Furniture
http://www.macys.com/Macys
http://www.mattressdiscounters.com/Mattress Discounters
http://www.mccreerys.com/http://www.naturwood.com/McCreerys
Naturwood Home Furnishings
http://www.potteryworlddecor.com/Pottery World Home Décor
http://www.sleeptrain.com/Sleeptrain Mattress Centers
http://www.tuscanyfurniture.com/Tuscany Home Furnishings
Actual Terms Examined:furniture sacramento
bed room furniture sacramento
kid furniture sacramento
furniture store sacramento
baby furniture sacramento
discount furniture sacramento
computer furniture sacramentoOnly one local furniture retailer made the first-page of Google or Yahoo!
(And that site was only listed on the Google first-page, not on Yahoo sites.)
Only one.You can’t swing a dead cat near the Saturday A-Section of The Bee without hitting at least 3 of their full-page Ads, but you can’t find 22 of them using the most obvious and popular search terms for furniture on the most used search engine in the country? Something is wrong.
The missed opportunity is even more staggering when you consider that to capture many of these very warm, local leads, one would only need mount a very modest search engine marketing strategy that could cost less than $500 a month.
These are not small furniture stores. Many have very savvy owners and smart people marketing them. They have TV and radio budgets. Collectively, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on local newspaper advertising. How could they let their company become so invisible to so many local searches?
My guess is, they just don’t know. Blame it on LOIS.Many companies think they have “the web thing” covered because they have a nice looking site. However, building a fantastic looking billboard on a rarely traveled road will do you about as much good.
So, if it’s not the local guy, who is selling to these Sacramento area furniture customers?1. National, online furniture sellers. These guys are selling to our Sacramento area furniture buyers. A sample of some of the search marketers on Google…
· Eco-Furniture
· Home Visions
· Overstock
· Direct Furniture
· Furniture Half Price
· NC Furniture HouseAre they coming in to local showrooms to sit on those sofas or mattresses only to go home and order it online? (Maybe more often than you’d think.)
2. Third-party marketing sites.
·
Switchboard (Online Yellow pages)
·
Sac Bee’s Furniture Finder (Disclosure: My personal pet project when I worked as The
Bee’s Online Business development Manager.)
·
Verizon Superpages (Online Yellow pages)
·
Sacramento.com (Also one of my projects while at The Bee. A partnership with local
guys – Surewest Directories.)
·
Sacramento.Bizjournals.com (Office furniture)
·
Kellysearch.com·
City SearchNOTE: It is true that many of the furniture retailers examined can be found on sites like the online yellow pages and other third-party sites listed above.
It is fair to say that eventually, these searchers may have found their way to some of these local furniture sites.
However, consider these benefits for the retailers of going search engine direct…
Controlled Presentation and Linking: Furniture is a glamorous business. It is all about beautiful things that make us feel good when they are in our homes. The Yellow Page-like listings that make up most of the presence listed for the furniture guys are little more than a bunch of 10-point text. If you want your web site linked – you must pay. Fair.
However, why pay a middleman site to bring that lead to you from the same search engine that you can use directly, without sharing that lead with every other furniture store listed on that page?No Clutter: By making sure you have good search placement (paid or natural) your site will be presented to the searcher by itself, not clustered into a list of other local competitors that the searcher may have not even considered prior to entering a third party marketing site.
No Guessing about ROI: Search engine marketing can provide crystal-clear reporting on everything from web site lead generation to actual incoming phone calls. By taking control of your own page-one presence, you can steer the message and fully account for where your dollars are spent.
3. Smarter than the Big-Guys or just paying attention?I was pleased to find two local furniture stores advertising on Google,
PacificImports.com and ConsignFurniture.com both had PPC links shining brightly at the top of the Google search results pages for ‘furniture sacramento.” Good for you both!
(NOTE: I attempted to speak with Pacific Imports owner Mark Mosher and Consign-it Home Furnishings owner, Bonnie Grisel. Neither was there for my calls, so I left message. Should they be willing to share any success stories with me [I wouldn’t!] I’ll post then here as a follow-up item to this piece.)
A Word on Local Search Listings on National Engines.Not to long ago, Google and many other search sites, started their own online Yellow Pages of sorts – locally sorted information appearing on Google Local for example.
My research did show the following local furniture stores to be visible on page-one of Google, listed as Google Local listings, when searching “furniture sacramento”:
· Ethan Allen
· Goore's
· Office Depot
Although not a traditional search result placement, and not yet something these stores can shape the presentation of directly in the same way you can with sponsored links, they were there nonetheless.
Surprisingly, Office Depot’s link lead to a new page where the first website linked was for OfficeMax! Nice example of handing a lead over to the competition.
In conclusion:1.
Of the 23 Sacramento-area furniture stores researched, all but one were completely missing from page-one results on our two largest search engine networks – Google (with 37.5% of total searches last month.) and Yahoo! (30.1%) Rankings source: Comscore.com
2. With 63% of Americans online now, statistically it is safe to say that the greater Sacramento four-county area has
at least 600,000 to 700,000 Internet users. Source: PewInternet.org
3.
76% of the guys and 80% of the women surveyed use Search Engines to research furniture online was nearly as valuable as a visit to the stores own website.
4.
75% of those shoppers who researched home furnishings online said they had made a local shopping trip within the week following their online research.
If search engine research is so popular with furniture shoppers and so very cost effective for the advertisers, why then are more furniture retailers not taking advantage of such a powerful tool?
I have no idea. Do you?
Please let us know what you think. Post your thoughts at
Prosper Magazines Blog.
www.prospermag.comEnd Note:By the way, the only local store to show-up was Copenhagen Furniture.
http://www.copenhagenfurniture.com. Congratulations!
(Now Copenhagen, let’s see what we can do about getting Yahoo! to list you on page-one as well!)
About Jim Bonfield:Jim Bonfield is the recent past Online Business Development Manager for The Sacramento Bee’s Internet division (Sacbee.com, Sacramento.com and SacTicket.com) and co-founder of Left Brain Studios – an interactive lead generation company in partnership with Fatbottomline.com. His Local Internet Marketing Blog can be found at
http://www.eyeballfarm.com or
http://www.eyeballfarm.blogspot.com. Email him at:
jbonfield@leftbrainstudios.com.
