Many years ago, when search was the new buzzword, the early focus was very much on the technical side. We were swept into the all-consuming craze of making sure our websites were legible to machines, and ensuring that when someone declared their intent, we would be found.
For decades, that little empty search bar placed a surprisingly large burden on the consumer: Tell me what you want.
On the other side of the equation, we learnt to translate our messy human needs into searchable language. “Family holiday Fiji.” “Best home loan rate.” “CRM software enterprise business.” The better we could declare our intent, the better the internet became at retrieving an answer.
But our actual needs rarely begin as search terms. “I need a break.” “My mortgage feels expensive.” “I want somewhere interesting for dinner tonight.”
I think that gap, between the human need and the declared search intent, is the most interesting part of modern discovery. Because increasingly, we don’t need to know exactly what we’re looking for before we start looking. This shift is creating a change in human behaviour. Intent and serendipity are starting to coexist.
Search taught us to declare our intent, but it was just the start of discovery
When online search first became available, it was a relatively simple exchange. We provided a query and a search engine retrieved the most relevant options.
We became good at getting what we needed. We learnt to shorten our needs into keywords, to add qualifiers, or to refine the search when the results weren’t quite right. “Holiday” became “family holiday”, then “family holiday Fiji”, followed by “best Fiji resorts for kids”.
Behind each of those searches was a much deeper and more nuanced human need. Perhaps we were exhausted. Perhaps the kids needed entertainment. Perhaps we wanted somewhere warm, easy and within a certain budget. Search didn’t need to understand all of that, it just needed us to convert the need into something searchable.
For marketers, this created an entire discipline around declared intent. We identified the words people used, and worked hard to be present when they appeared. It’s only now that I feel we’re more clearly understanding that declared intent has always captured only a part of how people discover what they want.
Intent and serendipity are starting to coexist
Think about some of the best things you’ve discovered. It could be a restaurant recommended by a friend, a book sitting next to the one you went into the shop to buy, or a product that solved a problem you had simply learnt to live with. We encountered these things,and we didn’t even necessarily know that was what we were looking for.
For a long time, digital experiences have tended to separate or ignore the more serendipitous discovery behaviours. We put our eggs in the ‘search’ basket, missing that it was used when people knew more exactly what they wanted. Social media feeds, with their ever evolving algorithms, have expanded how we think about discovery. They’ve given users recommendations and new people to follow more spontaneously than a standalone search bar.
At its heart, ‘search’ is active, ‘discovery’ is more serendipitous, and now those two behaviours are starting to coexist in the same journey.
To amplify discovery, start with the problem, not the answer
Think about how we make decisions when talking to another person. If you walked into a travel agent and said, “Fiji”, a good travel agent wouldn’t immediately hand you a list of every hotel in Fiji. They’d ask questions. Who’s travelling? What sort of holiday do you enjoy? How much do you want to spend? Do you want to explore, or not leave the resort for seven days?
We don’t necessarily arrive with the answer. We arrive with a need, a circumstance, an ambition or sometimes just a vague sense that something could be better. Modern discovery increasingly allows us to behave in the same way.
Instead of starting with “best electricity plan Victoria”, the starting point can be: “My power bills keep going up. I work from home and we use most of our electricity during the day. What could I do differently?” The answer might be another energy plan, but it could also be solar, insulation, a government rebate or replacing an inefficient heater.
If the need is “I need to make my weekly shopping budget go further”, the answer could be a cheaper place to shop, but it could also be cheaper recipes, buying in bulk, meal planning or changing the types of products you buy.
In these examples, the consumer has started with their need. Their intent is strong, and their consideration set is open. It’s about more than an answer or a product intent, and therein lies the space for discovery.
Consumer consideration is an opportunity, not an obstacle
For marketers, this raises an interesting question: what happens when a consumer’s consideration set begins forming before they’ve decided what category they’re shopping in?
Historically, we’ve thought about consideration within reasonably well-defined boundaries. Someone looking for a home loan considers home loan providers, for instance, or someone buying a car considers car brands. The reality is, human needs aren’t always that neatly categorised, and the consumer may not yet know which category contains the right answer.
Far from being an obstacle, this creates a significant opportunity for brands. You can potentially enter the consideration set before the consumer is looking for you, or even looking for your category.
From capturing demand to participating in discovery
For years, digital marketing has focused on identifying what customers are searching for. Are we present for the right searches? Are we ranking for the right terms? Are we converting the demand that already exists? These questions remain important, but they’re not the first step in discovery.
Before someone searches “family holiday Fiji”, something made them want a holiday. Before “best home loan rate”, something made them question their mortgage. There’s a whole landscape of needs, tensions, questions and ambitions that exists before the search term. We now need to make sure we’re useful while the specific search is still taking shape. This means we must understand what’s happening in their world before they even know what to search for.
A person can have a very clear intention without having a clear product in mind. They can know the outcome they want without knowing the category, or they can know the problem without knowing the solution, and they can begin actively looking while remaining open to being surprised.
For marketing leaders, that opens up a different set of questions:
- What are people really trying to achieve?
- What questions come before they know our category exists?
- Where could our brand add value before a product decision has been made?
- And what could we help someone discover that they didn’t know to look for?
More than search, these are customer questions, and answering them requires a deeper understanding of people than a list of keywords allows.
Looking beyond the search box for new possibilities
We can start with the messy need – the frustration, the ambition, the context, the half-formed thought that perhaps there is a better option – and from there, we can discover possibilities.
For brands, that creates an opportunity to think beyond being found and towards being discovered. The most valuable moment may be when someone knows what they want to change, but don’t yet know what might change it.
Search helped us find what we were looking for, the next era of discovery will increasingly help us find what we didn’t know to look for.
