Jun

If SEO and PPC Work For Them…

By Sid

Forbes Media recently released the results of their survey of senior marketing executives on the effectiveness of various marketing tactics for brand perception and conversion to sales. [View the complete 2009 Ad Effectiveness Survey here: http://www.forbes.com/adinfo/research.html]

It’s a good report, and while the summary information is useful, it can be easily taken out of context to mean something other than what I believe it really means. If you actually read the report and examine the PowerPoint slides, you’ll come away feeling differently about the results than by reading a simple summary.

Here’s what they learned:

Respondents appreciate the halo effect that a website or publication can have on their brand; 43% said that sponsoring a website, page or digital publication is the most effective digital tool when it comes to affecting brand perceptions.
SEO and Email and e-newsletter marketing are by far the most popular method of digital marketing among respondents, used by three-quarters.
Respondents were by far the least happy with ad networks, with half saying that the results did not meet expectations.
The tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48%), email and e-newsletter marketing (46%), and pay-per-click/search marketing (32%).
In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases. Behavioral Targeting is the category that is least likely to see any changes in spend.

My Interpretation of the Forbes Survey

Before you jump to any conclusions,you have to look at who responded, their marketing budget, and how this might then apply to you.

These were folks with big budgets. 83% of the respondents were Director level (Chief Marketing Officer), and the AVERAGE budget for digital media (online stuff) was $4.7 million dollars.

Those with smaller budgets saw e-mail and e-newsletter as being more effective than PPC (because they used it more), and the reverse was true for those with larger budgets. Makes sense to me.

Also, you should understand that they measured “effectiveness” by the bottom line of whether or not the marketing dollars spent resulted in sales. They weren’t measuring leads, and they didn’t care one iota for touchy-feely relationship stuff.

Although these were a few big companies, I believe the results are applicable to every sized business, and here’s why:

Search Engine Optimization is Still a Requirement

Sure, Twitter is loads of fun. But, the quality of the leads you get from the search engines is higher than you’d get with advertising, PPC,and even the beloved Twitter. The reason for this is simple. People use search engines to look for information and get help with a problem.

They inherently trust the sites that come up first in the search engine. Heck, if Google thinks these sites are worth ranking high, then they must be good.

These are more qualified and more highly targeted prospects because they are looking for something specific, which hopefully they find on the company web site.

E-Mail Marketing Still Works

Statistically, open rates are actually rising. As spam filters get more sophisticated, people are opening and reading more of their email, particularly if it is from a company with whom they’ve already done business. [Note: a recent study shows that Mondays are best for sending emails]

The study doesn’t say anything about how they do email marketing, but my best guess is that it’s a combination of “information” useful to the reader, special offers, and advance notice of new products or services.

PPC Works… If You’ve Got the Money

These big companies agree that PPC and CPM (banner ads) work pretty well. They’ve also got almost $5 million to spend on digital marketing. As a smaller company, you have to avoid competing with these bigger budget companies for your keyword phrases.

I’d advise either hiring a PPC specialist or getting some good training in PPC from people who do it full-time (internet marketers in particular). If you want some great training AND tools for doing PPC, my favorite is at PPC Kahuna. Funny name for a product/company, but they know their stuff and have “bomber” tools.

And Then There’s Social Media and Social Networking…

Remember, these are BIG companies with huge budgets. Social media and social networking is fairly new to them, so they haven’t quite got the metrics down to measure their results.

This doesn’t mean that they aren’t using Twitter, Facebook, viral video and other social tools. By this time, I suspect that most are in some capacity. As a CMO, though, they don’t see it if they don’t have the stats to prove that it works.

While you and I may know that the social web is here to stay, and that things like Twitter are highly useful marketing tools, they’re not sure because they don’t have the numbers to prove it works yet.

Wait… and see. Next year will probably bring quite different results, although you’ll STILL see SEO at the top of the list. The difference will be that their SEO efforts are DRIVEN BY social networking and social media.