Online merchants say paid search is tops for consumer acquisition

Exactly what would you say is the most effective marketing techniques for acquiring brand-new customers?

85 % of sellers in the new 2014 Shop.org/ Forrester Research study Inc. State of Retailing Online research, stated paid search.

Only 81 sellers took part in the survey, which was conducted through May and June of 2014, but even if the number was 810 the outcome likely would have been the very same.

Search still works. It’s familiar to both marketers and consumers and as long as Google keeps turning out excellent results, paid search will continue to be a hit. Think about all the important things you searched for on the internet this week. The number of times did that search start with Google or Bing? I browse for a lot of things on eBay and I find that I improve outcomes from Google than on eBay itself. Very same for Twitter. It’s merely a more efficient method of discovering information and all of us understand it.

Because it’s so effective, merchants said they spend more on paid search than any other type of marketing and 4 out of 5 are investing a lot more than they invested in 2014.

62 % of merchants surveyed likewise plan to invest more on Facebook interactive marketing and other social networks efforts.

Here’s exactly what I question. If companies had to pay just to preserve a presence on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest) – – do you believe budgets would shift even further because direction? Marketers commonly groan about the lack of concrete results on social networks, but they remain since it’s mainly complimentary. Would they go if it wasn’t complimentary? Picture how that would effect the whole social networks picture … Food for thought.

Back to the study.

I was amazed to see that 40 % of merchants utilize affiliate programs to acquire brand-new customers. I used to be really involved in affiliate marketing however given that social media took off, it is among those avenues that’s fallen away for me. I think that’s not so for the bulk.

Shop says display screen ads are coming on more powerful thanks to advances in behavioral targeting and remarketing. However Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali warns marketers not to obtain too caught up in all the new and glossy objects such as complex attribution tools that help you follow customers from gadget to gadget.

One of the most unexpected findings from the research study was that even when a seller does utilize among the more “advanced” kinds of attribution measurement, their actual allocation of marketing invest doesn’t vary that much from those that simply make use of last click.

Something you can measure is how many people open email marketing messages on a mobile phone. 42 % of opens take place on a mobile phone. In 2014, it was just 28 %. Tablet opens rose from 16 % to 17 %. Not as significant however you can see where this is going.

States Mulpuru-Kodali;

I think the essential takeaways from this report are that you require to keep enhancing your Google initiatives, you should not ignore e-mail as it’s still extremely much alive, you should not be too enamored of shiny objects like beacons, and last click attribution– though flawed– still works for now.

Marketing Pilgrim

Online merchants say paid search is tops for consumer acquisition