When we talk about integrating search with cross-channel planning, much of the immediate attention goes to media buys: what’s going on in TV, Display, Print, Out of Home, Radio and Search, and how can these efforts be united to deliver a single message to the consumer. While this is essential to maximizing the opportunity to engage consumers and deliver the fullest ROI, advertisers often overlook what is happening in other areas of their marketing and PR programs and how they can be leveraged with search marketing to close the circle of engagement. As a result, advertisers are missing the opportunity to speak to a captive audience that has interest in the subject they’ve tied their organization to, connect consumers with their brand in a fresh forum, and in some cases, are missing the opportunity to localize their national brand.

The PGA Tour hit St. Louis this past weekend for the BMW Championship, complete with golf’s biggest names – Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, and Trevor Immelman, as well as the Championship winner, Camilo Villegas, who brought his signature “Spiderman” pose to town. For a few days, national sports attention turned to the Gateway to the West for highlights and coverage, including three dedicated hours on a Sunday afternoon by NBC. National promotion for the tournament began early on in the PGA’s line up of events, but from a local perspective, hype around the BMW Championship started more than a year ago on the mere buzz that Tiger Woods was coming to town. (For those of you who have been removed from the golf scene for a bit, much to my dismay and that of golf fans around the world, Tiger’s out with an injury and will be back in ’09.) Needless to say, whether you were a golfer, golf fan, occasional viewer, someone who should never hold a club, or a person with simple interest in events taking place in the community, for a long time the public has known that the PGA was paying a visit to St. Louis and one of our finest golf courses at Bellerive Country Club.

With tickets in hand for Sunday’s final round, I jumped online prior to heading out to look up the specs – best places to park, what you can and cannot bring, tee times, and as an admitted news junky always curious as to how St. Louis is presented in the news, to browse around for general information and news coverage about the Championship.

It was this activity that inspired me to write this post and turned my “I’m jumping online for just a second, honey” comment into a 30-minute lie.

Innocently starting off on Google with “BMW Championship” in search of the main site, the golf fan in me was suddenly distracted (er, disappeared) and the marketer took over – I saw search marketing strategy! Cheers to BMW for leveraging the Championship at the local level with the following ad:

Official BMW Site
www.stlouisbmw.com
Find Out What You’ve Been Missing – Learn More at BMW’s St. Louis Site

A quick glance to the right revealed ads from ticket broker StubHub, and the all-you-need-to-know golf buzz site, Golf Observer. “People are starting to get smart with their search strategies,” I thought. At that point, I went into a search frenzy on Google.

“Golf” yielded paid ads, but nothing specific to the PGA or BMW Championship. “PGA Golf” yielded a few sites you’ve likely never heard of, but again, nothing tied to the Championship. “Phil Mickelson,” “PGA Tour” – nothing. Not even an ad. Even “Bellerive Country Club,” site of the Championship. Nothing. Discouraged and still on Google, I searched for the top golfers on the leaderboard as they entered Sunday’s final round, a successful search strategy I’ve seen our search strategists employ for a network around a major tennis tournament. Camillo Villegas, Jim Furyk, Anthony Kim. Looks like TheBigPutt and Medicus (DriveTheMax.com) were the only two companies that got it right and leveraged their affiliation with Furyk and Villegas.

My search marketing high seemed to fade as I jumped over to Yahoo! to give these golf terms a swing. I was quickly surprised – is Yahoo! the engine of choice for golfers? Advertisers sure think it is. A search for “BMW Championship” yielded four paid results, although I would have liked to see BMW there touting their local dealerships. “Bellerive Country Club” also yielded four paid ads, including one from PGATour.com and one specifically for the BMW Championship from PremiumTicket.us. “Camilo Villegas” drew the top organic listing for PGATour.com, as well as three ads from PGATour.com, DriveTheMax.com and a golf website. Others on the leaderboard? “Jim Furyk” resulted in eight ads, including one from American Express; a few companies even bid on “Anthony Kim.”

Amazed at the spike in relevant golf ads on Yahoo! as opposed to Google, I quickly realized tee times were approaching, wrapped up my research and headed to the golf course. While I quickly transformed to the excited golf fan seeing her favorite golfers for the first time live, with my searches still fresh in mind, I was stunned upon arrival to see banners for Kodak and MasterCard flanking every large screen on the course, and NBC’s broadcast of the final round.

Where were they on the engines? Companies I’ve never heard of reached out to me during my early morning searches. Even American Express tapped Jim Furyk who was #2 going into Sunday’s round. Yet, big brands like Kodak, MasterCard and NBC, who spent large sums of dollars to be associated with such a high-profile event, had months to target the golf audience through search, and in this case, didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to speak. The opportunity was there to target me based on my interests and intent shown through my search behavior. The opportunity was there to localize their brand by tying themselves through search to the BMW Championship and to be in front of golf fans and the St. Louis community who had interest in attending in person or watching the broadcast.

I raise this question a lot, “Why aren’t you leveraging sponsorships and PR programs with search?” The answers all seem the same. “It wasn’t a part of our strategy.” “That’s a different division.” “We didn’t have the budget.” “We considered it, but saw opportunity elsewhere.” I also know organizations — the Olympics, NCAA, and possibly the PGA — have tight usage rules in place around their trademark or sponsorships.

Yet, while leveraging other marketing programs outside of media buying may not be a part of everyone’s strategy, I’m not quite sure the right conversation is even taking place.

Whether it’s national or local-level sponsorship, sports marketing, promotions, community relations, cause marketing or general PR programs, these activities, outside of traditional media buys, continue to be overlooked as an opportunity to fully maximize engagement and localize brands through search. The opportunities for paid search are endless, as are ways you can optimize your website(s) or drive social media engagement around these programs. Consider the niche audience – or even broader, potential audience – advertisers could tap. Advertisers have consumers there, raising their hands, searching for information around an event or program that they’ve deemed important or targeted enough to partner with and spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars on. Yet, when they have the audience’s attention, advertisers let the conversation fall short and miss their chance to create true engagement.

Such an approach to search marketing requires thinking outside of the box, early planning, integrating your search teams with multiple divisions in your business, and realizing that search dollars can come from other areas (sponsorship, PR), and not just digital or media spends. It is taking your smart spends, which in many of these cases have ROI that is hard to measure, and making them smarter – and measurable.

No one seemed to really capture the full search opportunity around the PGA’s BMW Championship, but it is nice to see a few advertisers landed close to the hole.