'Net Features : sempo, search marketing

Search Marketing Trends for 2011

Linc Wonham — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Few Web professionals should be surprised by the 2011 forecast in SEMPO’s recently released State of Search Marketing Report. If the words “social” and “mobile” are at the top of your business plan, pay close attention to the following.

If they are not, drop what you’re doing and pay even closer attention.

With over 900 companies and agencies participating in the global online survey, the report estimates that the North American search marketing industry will grow by 16 percent in 2011 to a value of $19.3 billion, up from $16.6 billion in 2010.

Just under half of the respondents said they use Facebook for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns – 47 percent in North America and 45 percent outside the U.S. and Canada. The rising popularity of Facebook is even more apparent within agencies, as nearly 74 percent of North American agencies and 69 percent of those outside the U.S. and Canada said their clients use Facebook.

The rise of the mobile internet, however, is the trend that is having the most impact on search marketing. More than a third of the companies surveyed (40 percent) said that the growth of the mobile internet was “highly significant”, an increase from 26 percent last year. An additional 39 percent said that mobile’s growth was “significant” to their businesses.

Agencies are feeling the impact of the mobile internet even more strongly, with 47 percent of supply-side respondents describing its impact as highly significant.

Local search is the next most significant trend, with 43 percent of respondents saying it was highly significant. An additional 41 percent said that it is significant. According to agencies, 34 percent of client search budgets are spent on local PPC advertising at regional, city or sub-market levels.

Client-side advertisers are not yet affected as much as their agency counterparts by local search, the survey showed. Only 26 percent of respondents said that the impact of local search has been highly significant. Local, on average, represents 23 percent of client-side search budgets, which is significantly less than the agency average of 34 percent of client budgets.

The survey also indicated the growing importance of behavioral targeting, as the number of respondents that consider it highly significant or significant rose from 68 percent last year to 78 percent in 2011.

And for more on social, the percentage of companies using Facebook beyond PPC now stands at 84 percent, up from 73 percent last year. Three quarters of those surveyed use Twitter to promote their companies or brands, while 52 percent use LinkedIn.

SEMPO State of Search

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:57:00 GMT

Measuring return on investment (ROI) is the top challenge facing marketers this year according to the recently released State of Search Engine Marketing Repot from SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization).

The complexity of measuring ROI is the biggest challenge across channels - search engine optimization, paid search and social media marketing. The report estimates that the North American search engine marketing industry will grow 14% from $14.6 billion in 2009 to $16.6 billion by the end of 2010.

Additional key finding from the report include:

- The rise of social media marketing budgets, although still modest compared to search engine optimization and paid search, represents the biggest opportunity for search marketers this year.

- Around half the companies (49%) are reallocating budgets to search engine marketing from print advertising. More than a third (36%) are shifting money away from direct mail, and almost a quarter are moving budgets from conferences and exhibitions (24%) and web display advertising (23%).

- The research highlights Google’s dominance as a search engine, with 97% of companies paying to advertise on Google AdWords. Nearly three quarters of companies (71%) pay to advertise on the Google search network while 56% use the Google content network (keyword targeted).

- More than half of advertisers (56%) and agencies (62%) say that Google keywords have become more expensive over the last year. Meanwhile, only around a third of advertisers noted an increase in Yahoo (32%) and Bing (29%) keyword costs.

- From a range of trends and marketplace developments, company respondents are most likely to say the personalization of search results is having an impact. Just under a third of companies (31%) say this is “highly significant,” and a further 44% say it is “significant.” Agency respondents felt the “rise of local search” was the most significant emerging trend with 38% saying this was “highly significant” with 47% labeling it as “significant.”

Sara Holoubek, outgoing SEMPO President for 2009-2010, said, “Difficult market conditions caused by the recession resulted in a relatively slow year for the industry in 2009, which was improved by a significant upturn in the fourth quarter. This momentum has continued into 2010, and we are expecting a return to double-digit percentage market growth in 2010.”

School’s (NOT) Out for Summer

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:00:00 GMT

SEMPO just announced that it’s adding two new courses to its collective of effective search marketing classes. “Linking and Brand Management” and “Social Media” are live online and available for immediate registration ($299 each).

The Linking and Brand Management course will cover "how to obtain high quality links from a variety of sources, including link recovery, directories, social media and expert articles. It will explain how to develop compelling content and how to effectively promote the content to traditional and online media in order to attract links, and include discussion on the use of humour, interactive games, podcasting and video as tools for link attracting."

SEMPO's Social media course will "examine the gamut of social media and employ case studies to illustrate the right and wrong way of using social media to fulfill marketing objectives."

"SEMPO Institute's growing menu of short courses fits the demands of busy search marketers who want to hone in on a particular topic that correlates with their job responsibilities, in order to increase their skills and add even further value to their client work," says Adam Cohen, partner in Rosetta, a leading U.S. interactive agency, and a member of SEMPO's Social Media course review team.