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Integrate Your Online and Offline Marketing
I just read an excellent study completed by noted Search Engine Marketing Specialists iProspect, and Jupiter Research in August 2008. It demonstrates the importance of integrating your search engine marketing efforts with your offline marketing. The study found that "67% of search engine users had been motivated to perform a search on a search engine in the previous six months as a direct result of exposure to some form of offline marketing. The study also revealed that of that 67%, a full 39% ultimately purchased a product or service from the company that had prompted their original search."*
I believe there is lots of “hocus pocus” in some search engine marketing advice – be careful who you solicit advice from. Leading companies like iProspect take a true marketing approach to the subject, and base their advice on solid research such as this. Remember, a search engine marketer must be, first and foremost, a marketer – not just an IT specialist. It’s also critical to achieve senior management buy-in, in order to tear down silos. When the order to build integrated on- and offline marketing comes from the top down, then everyone understands their role – marketing, IT, sales, and customer service.
Vogel Marketing Solutions can analyze your current efforts, and consult with you on ways to maximize the return on your marketing investment. Call Mark Vogel at 717-368-5143 to discuss your needs, or email VogelMarketing@verizon.net.
Click here for a PDF of the full iProspect/Jupiter Research report.
Here is the survey's Executive Summary.
Executive Summary: The key take-away from this study is that the techniques and practices employed by search engine marketers do not always take advantage of the behavior of search engine users. As a result, under certain circumstances, search marketers are wasting time, effort, and budget that could be better invested elsewhere. Be it the types of digital assets on which search engine marketers focus their optimization efforts, the extent to which they integrate their search marketing campaigns with offline marketing initiatives, the offline channels on which they are focusing their integration efforts, or the techniques they use to integrate their search marketing and offline campaigns – marketers would be well-served to align their efforts to match user behavior.
Below are four findings that highlight the key disconnects between search engine marketer priorities, and search engine user behavior. The fifth finding addresses the organizational obstacle marketers encounter when trying to integrate their search marketing efforts with offline channels.
- When optimizing various types of digital assets, search engine marketers focus on images (58%) more than press releases (32%) and videos (20%). But this prioritization does not correspond with that reported by search engine USERS in iProspect’s April 2008 Blended Search Results Study. When measured by their propensity to click on these asset types within the blended organic search results of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, search engine users attributed importance to them in the following order: news (36%), image (31%), and video (17%). Consequently, search marketers should put more effort into producing and optimizing press releases – which appear as “NEWS” items with the search results – in order to appear, and be clicked by search engine users, within the blended organic search results.
- Only 55% of search engine marketers report intentionally “coordinating or integrating” their search marketing efforts with at least one offline marketing channel. Direct mail (34%) and magazine/newspaper advertising (29%) are the channels with which marketers most frequently coordinate or integrate their search marketing efforts. Both television (12%) and radio advertising (12%) trail well behind in third. In contrast, television advertising (37%) is the leading offline channel when it comes to driving search engine users to perform a search. Consequently, search engine marketers should put more effort into integrating their television advertising with their search engine marketing efforts. And in general, search marketers should invest more effort into integrating their efforts with offline channels given these channels’ ability to drive people to search (67%) and to ultimately make a purchase (39% of the 67%) – according to findings from iProspect’s August 2007 Offline Influence on Online Search Behavior Study.
- The two integration techniques most frequently employed by search marketers are to prominently include the company Web address (84%) and the company name (66%) in offline marketing initiatives. iProspect believes that these two techniques are not optional, but absolute necessities in performing sound fundamental marketing in general – even if one is NOT trying to drive people to search. The technique of utilizing the same keywords in offline campaigns that are used in search marketing campaigns is being employed by just 26% of marketers. This is unfortunate, as this is an extremely effective integration technique that offers marketers significant “bang for their buck” in terms of potential increases in campaign performance. Marketers are strongly advised to invest the effort to employ this technique.
- Perhaps the study’s most surprising finding is that 24% of search marketers report that the reason for not integrating search marketing with offline channels is that their organizations are not participating in offline marketing channels at all. And while it is impressive to see that such a significant percentage of organizations are able to market themselves solely through online means (including search engine marketing), this strategy is ill-advised. Given the aforementioned power of offline channels to drive search referrals and purchases, marketers would be wise to diversify their marketing mix to include offline channels rather than focus 100% of their efforts and budget strictly online.
- The lack of integration between search engine marketing and various offline channels can be attributed to a number of factors, including: lack of budget (19%), lack of human resources (15%), didn’t consider integration (13%), lack of senior management buy-in (11%), and separate people managing search marketing offline channels (11%). However, there is definitely a correlation between the extent to which these factors serve as obstacles, and the company size and marketing budget of the organization. Marketers are advised to create business cases to present to their senior management – if possible with the assistance of their offline agency partners and/or search marketing firm – to justify the investment in human and monetary resources required for integration.
Click here for a PDF of the full study from iProspect.
* iProspect Search Engine Marketing Integration Study, August 2008, page 3
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