Econsultancy and Guava recently completed a study that found online marketers are increasingly turning to search marketing.
Of those who responded to the survey, 55 percent said they planned to increase spending on SEO and 45 percent said they plan to increase spending on paid search. In addition, 31 percent of SEO users and 32 percent of paid search users said they plan to maintain their current budgets.
The study also found that people generally use SEO and paid search to accomplish different tasks. For instance, during 2008, marketers said they used SEO to drive traffic, create leads, generate sales and brand. Marketers said they used paid search primarily to capture online sales, generate sales leads, drive Web site traffic and enhance the brand.
So far this year, with an unstable economy, marketers are finding that search marketing is the tool they would turn to the most to attract new customers. And while the advantages of SEO take time to materialize, it offers some positives compared to paid search.
“Search marketing is the best customer acquisition tool in the online space,” eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman said. “SEO improves organic listings, which Internet users prefer over paid search, and it is cost-effective.
“Furthermore, optimization works across all search engines, and an optimized site does not drop off the first results page even when marketer spending slows or stops — as it can with paid search,” Hallerman added.
Popularity: unranked [?]
May 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Not sure how important this is to add, but the original report focused on the UK, which this summary does not mention, unless the following link isn’t the source material: http://www.guava.co.uk/press/launch-sem-report-2009/
May 14th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I like the comment in the last paragraph, PPC placement drops off instantly when the spending stops. Good SEO will keep pages on the first pages of search engines long after they’ve been paid for!