Two weeks ago, Andy brought you the B2B Lead Generation handbook. Without further ado, we now bring you B2C.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. “Viral marketing” landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.
Some of the highlights from company respondents:
- A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on average, 53%) than offline (44%).
- Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.
- PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.
- Companies are now investing more in their in-house email marketing. The average proportion of budget devoted to this has increased from 10% to 15%.
- The biggest fallers since 2007 are affiliate marketing (from 50% to 43%),email marketing – rented lists (from 33% to 28%) and viral marketing (from 35% to 22%).
Luke Pursey, UK Managing Director, Clash-Media, stated:
The most encouraging difference from last year’s report is that now marketers are finally beginning to recognise proactive online lead generation as its own area of online marketing and not as a sub-division of affiliate marketing. The disconnect now is… helping them to make the most of it and maximising its potential as an extremely effective online marketing tool.”
No doubt there are a plethora of competing online lead generation activities. However, the results of the survey beg the question:
If marketers view SEO as a better value than PPC, why have the budget dollars slated for SEO decreased by 3% year over year? Is it the age old “snake oil” perception problem of SEO’s? Are SEO’s just lousy salespeople?
Any thoughts SEO’s?
The in-depth 44page report is chock full of charts, graphs and insightful tidbits on the various methods of online lead generation – a valuable resource for online marketers.
** Join Andy Beal, Om Malik, Biz Stone, Dave Taylor & other experts for 2-days of hands-on social media training. Save $250 with code “FOA” **
azuk said
This is excellent. Yesterday I read an article similar to this on how email marketing spend had risen since last year. With the credit crunch thick in pace, businesses require a low investment, high return marketing channel, in-house email is the obvious pick.
Anup Zaver, Senior Executive
Project Envy – ProjectEnvy.co.uk
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