Measuring Search Engine Marketing ROI
By Chris Sherman
Spending on search engine marketing (SEM) is rising
dramatically, yet surprisingly few companies are measuring
the effectiveness of their campaigns.
In a short survey conducted by web analytics vendor
NetIQ, more than 800 participants responded to questions
about their search engine marketing efforts and their
attempts to measure success. The survey responses provide
interesting insights into the state of search engine
marketing ROI.
Some of the findings include:
- 77 percent of users surveyed are currently using
or evaluating paid search strategies
- 41 percent are actively running paid search campaigns
- 31 percent of users don't measure their SEM activities
at all
- Of the ones that do measure, 60 percent are only
measuring basic click-through results and general
traffic activity
- 27 percent are measuring through to conversion,
but only 11 percent are conducting detailed ROI analysis,
looking at revenue by search phrase and lifetime value
"What surprised us was that people were doing
search engine marketing but not measuring it,"
said Brent Hieggelke, Vice President of WebTrends Marketing
for NetIQ. Hieggelke believes that many search marketers
are still grappling with the basic challenges of understanding
and implementing a search marketing campaign and have
not yet progressed to the next step of measuring whether
the efforts are working or not.
The survey questions were embedded within a ten-minute
web presentation called Take
10 on Search Engine Marketing. Here are the actual
results from the two questions:
How are you currently leveraging paid search campaigns?
- It's a significant part of our marketing mix: 23
percent
- It's a small part of our marketing mix: 18 percent
- Currently evaluating: 35 percent
- Not at all: 23 percent
- Total: 100 percent
How do you currently measure the results of your
SEM campaigns?
- Not at all: 31 percent
- Track click-through & general traffic: 41 percent
- Measure web activity through to conversion: 16 percent
- Detailed ROI analysis including lifetime value,
revenue by phrase: 11 percent
- Total: 100 percent
"It's showing that we're still squarely in the
infancy of the market," said Hieggelke.
Chris Sherman is Associate Editor of SearchEngineWatch.com.
This article was originally published in SearchDay,
a newsletter from SearchEngineWatch.com. Copyright 2003,
Jupitermedia Corp.
SearchDay: http://www.sewatch.com/searchday
Search Engine Watch: http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Discuss this topic with other IABC members at: www.iabc.com/memberspeak.
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