expertSEM

Recently, our stock market has dropped to its lowest point in five years, sending our country into an economic crisis and spreading just as quickly across the globe. Around this time, a mid-size, full-service advertising and marketing agency in the West saw one of the best lead months it had ever experienced with one of their education clients. Coincidence? This search marketer thinks not.

Looking into it further, using some tools of the trade, it became clear that there is definitely a correlation between some search topics that may be considered fitting for hard economic times and the state of Wall Street. For example, going back to the education example, it is clear by looking at some well known, easily accessible educational institutions that the interest for their services has risen as the stock market falls.

(Date range goes back to July 2007 to account for seasonality trends)

Continuing with this idea, I looked into other search themes that I would consider indicative of hard times. In general, there is a steady rise in most searches that would be related to an economy where people need help due to financial trouble.

While we don’t have any debt consolidation or job site clients, it is clear, according to Hitwise, that this trend continues across all traffic sources.

Although clearly there are industries that the stock market won’t affect such as high end clothing, luxury cars, and luxury homes or anything else more niche (case in point, searches for BMW have stayed steady for a year plus). In general, the declining stock market is a good opportunity for service related companies to continue to turn to online marketing in order to reach their growing client base.