Online Marketing Blog

For the 5th year in a row, MarketingSherpa has published their Search Marketing Benchmark Guide which has been completely re-written and edited including results from the Marketing Sherpa members search marketing survey, other studies performed over the last 12 months and “best of” research provided by over 50 respected sources.

The SEM Benchmark Guide is helpful for marketers looking to get a handle on the state of the SEM industry, trends, strategies and tactics.

If you’re a data enthusiast, there are 215 charts, tables and eyetracking heatmaps to help illustrate what’s happening in search marketing and what companies need to be paying attention to. There are also several good case studies. This particular edition is formatted into 5 sections:

Marketing Sherpa has formally announced their latest Search Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2008 with over 270 pages of fact filled goodness. For both in-house marketers and SEM agencies alike, this guide provides up to date insight into essential search marketing industry trends. Of particular interest to me was the special report on the challenges of bringing SEM in house. The trend is to continue using outsourced help with search marketing for part, not all of campaign implementation.

Also of interest was that the PPC and SEO disparity in budgets continues: Search marketers are spending about one-fifth as much on their SEO efforts compared to paid search

Marketing Sherpa is running their 4th annual survey for the next Search Engine Marketing Benchmark report. Last year over 3,000 marketers took the survey on Pay Per Click and search engine optimization tactics and practices. This year’s survey is only 13 questions and takes just a few minutes to complete.

Questions are heavily focused towards pay per click but also ask respondents to rate emerging tactics such as social search, blogs and pay per call. Examples of this year’s survey questions:

“When looking for ways to increase conversion, please describe the ROI of the following tactics:”

The 2007 report from Marketing Sherpa is out on search marketing benchmarks. Last year’s edition showed that SEO agencies beat in-house SEO by 300%. The new edition provides information from 3,944 marketers, agencies, and affiliates on PPC and SEO campaigns as well as eyetracking “heatmaps” to better understand how users view search results pages and ads.

The guide also includes five special reports:

• Search & Shopping
• Search Marketing & Public Relations
  
• Vertical, Second Tier, Local, and Pay Per Call Search
• Click Fraud — Perception versus Reality
• Search Eyetracking Study Year Two