Why is Search Marketing creating such a buzz?

The Search Marketing Industry

Although Search Marketing has become a mainstream activity worldwide, Australia is a little behind the US and Europe. The first dedicated Search Marketing symposium, Search Summit, was held in Sydney in March 2007.

The Search Marketing industry worldwide is continuing to grow rapidly. In 2005 the Search Marketing industry in North America was estimated to be worth $US5.75 billion, $US9.4 billion in 2006 (a 62% increase) and is anticipated to double to by 2011. (Source: SEMPO) This is in comparison to the wider advertising market growth of 4.1% in 2005 (Source: eMarketer).

The Market in Australia

Spending on Search Engine Advertising in Australia comprises 47% of online advertising expenditure in Australia (with the other 43% being made up of general advertising (such as banner ads, affiliate programs) and classifieds).

This expenditure has increased in 19 of the last 20 consecutive quarters, with expenditure in 2006 showing an 80% increase over 2005

Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia

Why is Search Engine Marketing so important?

Search Marketing is an under-exploited marketing channel, especially here in Australia.

The following statistics show why achieving high visibility in search engine results is so important to the volume of traffic that a website will receive:

• 93% of all internet traffic is generated from internet search engines
• 97% of them never look beyond the top three results
• 99% of search engine users do not search beyond the top 30 results
• 76.7% of Google users use the natural search links (organic, unpaid listings)

Source: Forrester Research, 2006

Search Engine Marketing and Traditional Advertising

With traditional advertising techniques, finding and connecting with new customers can be very expensive. TV and radio advertising involves paying a lot of money to speak with a relatively non-targeted audience.

Using search engine marketing, on the other hand, the targeting and relevance of your offering to prospective customers is high, because you know for a fact that you are reaching people who are looking for what you are offering (they have self selected by describing their needs using certain keywords).

In addition, when done properly, search engine marketing can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels when you are trying to reach a targeted audience.