Tricky Retailing Survey Data: My Money Is on PPC and SEO

Online retailers say they spend more money on PPC than search engine optimization and that SEO provides a better ROI than paid search.

Go figure.

Studies sure are funny. Sometimes they reveal statistical abnormalities. On other days, the stats speak for themselves – companies simply make foolish choices.

The latest Internet Retailer survey says merchants spend more on paid search (39.2%) than SEO compared to 34.7% who say they spend more on SEO than PPC.

In terms of conversion rates, SEO comes out on top – 46.1% vs. 37.3% for PPC.

I imagine they spend more because those paid ads cost so much money. And, unfortunately, media buyers pick the wrong keywords. A colleague told me this week that a prospect literally is using the same keyword phrase three different ways in a Google AdWords Ad Group: broad, partial and exact. Hey, if you have the right stuff, why not use it? I guess I could glue three types of shingles to my roof in a few years – on the same day.

As with other surveys, the focus seems to be on doing search engine marketing in-house (75.4%).

Outsourcing obviously has its risks – consultants with less insight and advice than advertised. On the other hand, so-called internal “teams” sometimes aren’t really teams at all. The work is squeezed in there with all of their other demands.

For example, the 2006 “iProspect Search Engine Marketing Job Function Study” showed that search marketers actually had an average of 5 other job responsibilities.

The bottom line is the bottom line. In the survey, 30.2% of web retailers said that search marketing is responsible for driving more than 50% of sales.

Where do you excel and where do you fall painfully short?