Gains in Website Traffic, Brand Awareness Biggest Wins for Marketers Last Year
February 25, 2010 By Melissa CampanelliThe two biggest wins for online marketers in 2009 were increased website traffic and increased brand awareness, at least according to an eM+C/eROI survey of 678 online marketers conducted last fall. The findings are included in a recently published whitepaper titled "Online Marketing Trends: What Worked in 2009 and What to Expect in 2010."
When asked which 2009 business win they attributed most to their online marketing efforts, 24 percent of respondents said increased website traffic and 21 percent said improved brand awareness. Other wins due to online marketing included increased sales (20 percent); new products or services (16 percent); list growth (11 percent); improved customer service (6 percent); and other (3 percent).
What led to these increases? Marketing teams that dedicated additional funds and time to email marketing and online communities, according to the survey. Forty-five percent of respondents, for example, increased their 2009 budgets for online community creation/management, and 66 percent increased their budgets for email marketing. What's more, marketing teams spent 32 percent of their time on email marketing and 15 percent of their time on social media.
An emphasis on email marketing, the whitepaper said, brought online marketers increases in traffic and sales, while an emphasis on online communities brought traffic, engagement and awareness.
Other findings from the study include the following:
∗ 85 percent of respondents said online marketing is increasing in priority, while 6 percent of marketers plan to decrease budget for online marketing in 2010;
∗ 60 percent of respondents reported an increase in their email marketing budgets this year versus 2009;
∗ 69 percent of respondents used social media tools in 2009, allocating about 15 percent of their marketing teams’ time to it;
∗ 29 percent of respondents increased their budget allocation for SEO/SEM from 2008 to 2009, while 15 percent reported a decrease;
∗ 38 percent of marketers reported increases in their budget allocation for SEO/SEM from 2009 to 2010, while only 10 percent reported decreases; and
∗ 80 percent of marketers reported no change in budget spend for mobile marketing from 2008 to 2009, but 30 percent reported increases for mobile spending in 2010.
Companies Mentioned:
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All About Email Creative
The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button COPYWRITING
Who's Charging What!
If this isn't a wake-up call to online multi-channel retailers I don't know what is. This is akin to celebrating the sun rising or having water on planet Earth.
Marketers are looking increasingly foolish in the eyes of the C-suite when they make these statements. CEO's and CFO's view digital marketing budgets as expenses... rather than an investment sin generating revenue.
We end up looking like money spenders -- rather than money makers.
What to do?
PROVE ONLINE WORKS:
Tie the Web directly to the sales funnel -- tangible business outcomes.
How?
Stop focusing on increasing conversion and improving shopping cart abandonment. Start tying these tactical success measures to bigger metrics: customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, average order, lead conversion to sale and churn/abandonment rate.
Start operating an organized, behavior-inducing system. One that ties tactical results inside search, social, e-mail, display and affiliate marketing to behavior-driven metrics.
Examine each tactic for measurability—based on actual outcomes (subscribers, sales, leads converted, etc.). If it doesn't track to an outcome (a lead, a sale, a download, a subscription) then MAKE IT... or stop investing in it.
Ask each campaign manager, "Can X campaign be tracked back to an eventual customer action?" If not, consider eliminating it or inserting a tracking mechanism.
STOP CELEBRATING NOVELTY:
That includes "social media." Friends and followers don't matter as muc h as leads and sales. **They never did.**
Quantitative metrics are less important than qualitative outcomes.
HIRE PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THE ABOVE:
Fire those who don't. Here's a quick way to weed the garden.
Move your team beyond "traffic," "visitors" and "blasts" by eliminating the words from your organization. They're no longer valid. No more "conversation" with customers and no more "buzz generation" either. Sales. Leads. Downloads. Trials. These are all you invest in.
Mandate this in a meeting next week by banning such words. Kick-start a discussion around language, and tie it directly to its effect on marketing's budget, compensation and departmental reputation among executive officers. Make a short list of better words.
Good luck!