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Sailing the Seas of Search
June 18, 2007

A decade ago, companies across the board were beavering away, striving to establish some kind of Web presence. Back on those halcyon days, it was enough just to be on the Web at all. But times change, and now that even newborn babies have a Web presence*, it’s not enough just to have a Web site, but to make that online presence more effective and stand out in some way.

For example, according to the most recent (Summer 2007) Industry Measure Design & Production survey (an extensive survey of ad agencies and graphic designers that has been conducted twice-yearly since 1996):

• 15% of graphic design and production establishments overall cited “using the Internet more effectively” as a business challenge, compared to 13% who said this a decade ago;
• 27% of ad agencies “using the Internet more effectively” as a business challenge, compared to 12% a decade ago.

We focus on agencies because they are very often the “marketing hubs” for companies in a variety of industries. For marketers, those days of “set it and forget it” in terms of a Web site are gone, probably for good. Today, the emphasis has been on getting the most bang for the Web buck.

“Search engine marketing” has been a hot topic in marketing for the past several years (go to any advertising and marketing trade show—such as ad:tech—and the sheer number of exhibiting companies that specialize in search engine marketing would stun a team of water buffalo). For example, in the Summer 2007 Industry Measure Design & Production survey, 25% of ad agencies cited “search engine marketing” as a sales opportunity. This isn’t especially surprising; after all, it’s one thing to have a Web site, quite another for prospective customers to find it.

Ergo, search engine marketing refers to the strategy of buying certain keywords so that one’s own Web site comes up prominently when people search for sites in Google or Yahoo!. Entire books have been written about search engine marketing, but suffice it to say here, search has become an integral part of companies’ marketing strategies. For example:

• In Summer 2007, 19% of graphic design and production companies (and 29% of agencies) said that they currently use “search engine marketing” to market and promote their clients’ (and their own) products and services; and
• 29% of graphic design and production companies (and 45% of agencies) said that “search engine marketing” was becoming more important for their clients’ (and their own) marketing efforts.

Search engine marketing is not without its pitfalls, however, and paying a premium for common search terms doesn’t automatically translate into more sales—and therefore doesn’t always provide substantial ROI.
Search engine marketing has evolved in recent days into a topic called “search engine optimization,” cleverly acronymized as “SEO.”

On Wednesday, we ‘ll look at how SEO has come to be incorporated into more and more companies’ marketing plans.

* Proud parents setting up Weblogs detailing the adventures of their newborns is becoming more and more popular. See, for example, this site.

Posted by Richard Romano on June 18, 2007 | Comments (0)