Study: Marketing Tactic Winners and Losers
It looks like paid advertising is still everyone’s favorite when it comes to website marketing. That’s the news from MarketingSherpa’s 4th Annual ad:tech attendee study. Among those surveyed, 49% pointed to PPC as the best source of ROI followed by email marketing/house list (47%) and search engine optimization (45%).
Actually, PPC fell a bit from 52% last year and e-mail remained flat. The biggest gain was SEO, which jumped from 33% to 45%.
The study offers more detail on budget planning, analytics and emerging tactics.
Why the big bump in SEO? The study simply suggests that SEO is under-budgeted given that SEO can produce a favorable ROI.
The reality is that SEO hasn’t given way to bookmarking. People still use search engines a great deal. But marketers as a whole haven’t caught on. Businesses don’t take SEO that seriously. But after all of these years, apparently the interest level is rising (that’s why you might see a big bump from one year to the next (among those who believe SEO outperforms other tactics).
I’m in touch with many company executives every week who just don’t have any urgency with SEO. They’re interested, curious but not easily convinced. I love showing them screenshots of who ranks in the top spots for quality search terms – when they’re not anywhere in sight.
Gee, who (not them) gets the visitors?
If you get involved in SEO, dedicate time. Don’t just pick keywords and touch up the architecture. High rankings come from ongoing work. You may get some top spots with minimal effort. Many keywords take time – a lot of time.
