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75% of global marketers (primarily from the UK) rate SEO as "excellent" (32%) or "good" (43%) in terms of return on investment, according to [download page] a new study by Econsultancy in partnership with Adestra. Not far behind is email marketing, rated "excellent" by 22% and "good" by another 44%, making these the top 2 digital channels for ROI. Read more »
Almost 86 million people use their mobile phones to seek local business information in the US, according to results from the Neustar Localeze and 15miles Sixth Annual comScore Local Search Usage Study [pdf]. The study highlights the growing importance of mobile devices to search, with the total number of visitors to search navigation sites conducted via mobile phones and tablets growing by 26% and 19%, respectively, between March and December 2012. Even more encouragingly, mobile searchers are more likely than PC and laptop searchers to make a purchase. Read more »
A Forrester Research survey [download page] of almost 60,000 US online adults and more than 15,000 European online adults reveals that few trust common types of digital advertising and promotions such as social media posts, ads on websites, and text messages from companies or brands. Looking solely at US respondents, only 15% trust social media marketing, 12% information about companies on mobile applications, 10% ads on websites, and 9% text messages from companies or brands. Read more »
26.4% of SMBs cannot be found in online searches because their websites earn a Google Page Rank of zero or have no Google Page Rank, finds vSplash in an audit of 3.9 million US SMB websites. The audit unearthed a series of deficiencies, which the researchers believe translate into a $24.3 billion revenue opportunity for digital media and marketing solutions providers. That's despite a recent report suggesting that 1 in 2 SMB online marketing service dollars are already being spent on web presence. Read more »
73% of mobile searches trigger additional action and conversions, finds Google in a study conducted in partnership with Nielsen, including 28% that result in conversions such as a store visit, call, or purchase. What's more, these actions occur soon after search: 63% of follow-up actions and 55% of conversions occurred within an hour after the mobile search. For example, 56% who called a business following a mobile search did so within an hour of that search. Read more »
Marketers from companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue are devoting the largest portion of their digital marketing budgets to digital or online advertising (12.5%) and content creation and management (11.6%), per survey results from a Gartner report. Those results reflect the ongoing growth of online ad spend in the US, as well as the continued rise in importance of content marketing. The study also finds that 28% of respondents reduced their traditional advertising budget to fund digital marketing activities, a finding supported by various pieces of research showing such a shift in the media mix. Read more »
Modern B2B marketing - increasingly reliant on digital marketing - has been shaped by forces such as tech-tracked ROI and the rise of social media, but one tried and true digital marketing channel remains most important, according to [download page] a study from BtoB magazine, sponsored by Eloqua. Respondents to the survey, who indicate greater adoption of modern marketing practices today than ever before, indicate that email (64%) is their most important digital marketing activity. Read more »
In a study [pdf] using data from 5,048 customers and surveys from 236 professionals knowledgeable about their company's marketing strategy, HubSpot has found that virtually all of its customers experienced an increase in traffic since using HubSpot, with a plurality (25.1%) attributing that increase to blogging. SEO (18.9%) social media (16.9%) and email marketing (13.5%) also got the nod for traffic increases, although few said paid search ads (5.6%) were behind their gains. Read more »
Consumers are spending an increasing amount of time performing various activities on mobile devices, finds comScore in its "US Mobile Future in Focus" [download page] report. In fact, in December of last year, comScore finds that 37% of total time spent online was via a mobile device, a far greater amount than the 23% GfK indicated in an earlier study. Among the categories that were above-average in mobile share of internet time were maps (84% mobile), weather (60%), music (57%), and social networking (55%). Read more »
TV ads might get just a small share of SMB marketing budgets, but they're perceived as extremely effective, according to results from a soon-to-be-released Vocus survey, conducted by Edge Research. The study found that 53% of respondents rated TV ads a top-2 box score on a 10-point scale of effectiveness. TV ads were rated as more effective than radio (43%), outdoor (43%), online display (42%) and print (31%) ads, and also beat out popular marketing channels such as search (SEO - 42%), social (40%), and email (39%). Read more »
