What are the biggest trends and challenges in search engine marketing today?
Based on your experience, what do you believe are some of the biggest trends/challenges you're seeing in the SEM landscape these days? I'm doing some research for an article, and although I've written on the topic in the past, I wanted to see what's changed mid-year.
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/blog/2008/01/sem-predictions-for-2008.html
Good Answers (6)
International search marketing is another important trend, IMO. Emerging markets, like BRIC, are becoming more and more important as their purchasing power growth. Meanwhile, we are reaching a ceiling when it comes to new internet and mobile penetration in Western Europe and the US. Countries like China and India are approaching our figures but with the huge growth potential.
eMarketer just released an interesting report on mobile marketing (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006363), point out that there are already 1.2 billion mobile users in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).
Of course, the challenge is in reaching those consumers and figure out what works for them.
Top Trend...certainly microblogging (Twitter & Plurk). Twitter & Plurk allow people to be in continual contact with the people in their network. Trusted people with large followings have great influence and can drive traffic / business to anyone they recommend. Microblogging is "Word of Mouth" marketing on steroids and a higher percentage of purchase decisions will be made with less (or no) search engine input.
Michael S
Marketing Turnaround Specialist
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Kent -
1. Google - Yahoo relationship change - uncertainty injected into market.
2. Throttling supply of impressions to increase CPC. PPC players have figured out they make more when they can reduce ad impressions and increase the value of clicks.
3. Affiliate marketing continues to get results via SEM.
4. SEO market is saturated again. This is cyclic.
5. Ad buyers continue to pay big $ for clicks... despite downturn in economy.
Kent -
A couple of trends that I see will be mobile search and video. Both are nowhere near their potential and see these exploding in the next year.
Mobile search: Yes, I’m still on the mobile search train. More and more consumers are buying phones with WAP-based search technology and the need for a better user experience is a must if mobile search is to take hold. Right now there is a lack of relevance in the mobile search results. Location is the biggest factor here as a user searching on a mobile phone is generally looking for something local, and immediate (i.e. directions, restaurant location, etc), so search results must be able to use the info from the phone (GPS data, user preferences) to serve the most relevant, meaningful results. If, and when, this happens there will be a much broader acceptance of mobile search. Oh, and now that the iPhone has significantly reduced its price, and made an even faster phone that is highly functional, other manufacturers will follow suit, which helps solve the usability issue.
Video advertising is just scratching the surface at this point. Google is offering video ads, and local sites such as Citysearch (and other IYPs) are also offering video to SMBs that can’t afford TV ad space. This trend will continue to grow, but how fast depends on conversions/revenue and ROI generated. This advertising medium allows businesses to connect more directly with consumers as they can easily show off their products (i.e. hotel tours) and provide a more unique, custom message that will resonate with consumers. Seeing a video of the product is much more compelling, and effective, than reading a text ad or banner ad.
David J. C
Director of Marketing Communications at Berry Network
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One trend that has not been highlighted yet is the growth of local search.
As the internet has evolved, so has the way people look for information. A growing number of search users are adding a local modifier such as a city name or a ZIP code to their searches to find relevant, local content. As a result, search queries include not only information about "what" the visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also "where" information, such as a street address, city name, maps, and the like. In addition, the increase use of mobile phones have also contributed people to conduct local searches while on the go.
Advertisers have responded to consumers growing need for local information by developing local search sites such as YELLOWPAGES.com, Superpages.com, Yahoo! maps and others. YELLOWPAGES.com alone is getting over 20 million unique visitors each month.
Marketers have had to respond to this trend by enhancing their key words to include local modifiers and to put processes in place to monitor and feed the search engines with accurate and complete data on all of their locations.
Kevin L
CEO, Didit, We-Care.com, DNB.PowerProfiles.com, SEMPO BOD, Author "Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising"
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On the paid search side, increasing competition combines with increasing complexity (lots of targeting and campaign setup options as well as bidding options) create a mathematical challenge for any serious marketer who isn't using appropriate technology.
For SEO the challenge is predictability of results and therefore budgeting time and energy to SEO.
More Answers (7)
In my opinion, one of the biggest trends right now is that large-scale B2B design wins are beginning to come in through search engines, organically. We have examples of large customers typing in their application in Google, finding our solution(s) in the results, and designing in our solution with our evaluation tools and products. Once the customer has already done all the work and designed us in, only then do they talk to one of our salespeople to get a price quote.
1 - Educating the Marketplace about Analytics and Metric strategies.
2 - Educating the Marketplace about the economics of PPC.
3 - More transparency in Quality Score.
4 - What to do about the "bad players" in our industry.
5 - Figuring out the economics of SEM and the under-served small business market.
Links:
Nate R
Communication Strategy Director | Social Business Communications at Huber + Co. Interactive
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IMO, one of the newest trends in SEO/SEM is the concept of "inventory marketing". This is being pioneered in the auto dealer industry, helping to generate leads for car dealers on the vehicles they have available on their lots.
Today, pages within website are typically optimized to be indexed, which can also be supported by PPC, banner ads, et al.
You can find examples of inventory marketing by searching for a specific product phrase. eBay and Amazon will typically index those pages in the top 5 rankings for whatever term you use. This is especially true if you add in a geographical tag following the term (ex: 2002 Honda Civic rear bumper Cleveland OH).
If search is about delivering the most relevant content in the top rankings, it seems that indexing a specific product page within a database makes a lot of sense.
Stephen L
Manager, New Media at The Timken Company
Best Answers in: Search Marketing (2), Internet Marketing (1)
The biggest trends and challenges in SEM are really going to depend on your industry. Each industry, as shown by some of the answers given already, have their own unique set of challenges. Overall, things like MicroHoo and now Googlahoo continue to keeps things on edge.
I work for an agency that deals with many different business and industries and my biggest challenge still is the education of SEM. Most of my clients think AdWords and AdSense are synonymous. In my experience, if they can't comprehend what it is, then they do not see value in doing it. Once they learn what it is and see the value in it, then they need to be educated on writing good copy, keyword research, quality score, landing page optimization, etc. Companies still do not fully understand the amount of effort it takes to get the most out of a SEM campaign.
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SEO is a stepping stone, the value additions should include interaction or the vaunted 'engagement' of your potential parties to your business activities. Captain Jack Communications has both in one package and works nationwide from publicly traded companies to start-ups with series intentions to make an impact on the web.
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1-800-581-3230
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Businesses are more relying on search engine marketing than past, share of search engine marketing channel in total marketing budget is being growing exponentially. there are lots of things happening in search engine marketing like search engines are getting smarter that is creating trust among advertiser, almost businesses trying out for their search marketing opportunity, competition is getting tougher, SEM proffessionals are easily available at affordable costs. The major search engine marketing challenge is to accute analysis of search marketing scope for any business, how to make most of available opprtunity.
Daniel L
CEO, LSF Interactive
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I concur with Bart Borosky's timely comment that there is a new trend whereby people now find their suppliers online through search and also through chat rooms, forums, and social networking sites (such as LinkedIn). The days of cold calling are probably behind us and being replaced with some sort of "professional online social networking".
I can see two important challenges with search marketing:
1. prices are going up and eventually may reach a level where they become comparable to other offline media.
2. search marketing volumes are much more limited than what people expect when they get into the game. Even perhaps more true for well known brands where the difference in conversion rate between branded and non-branded keywords is sometimes quite significant. And there are only a limited number of searches on branded keywords, unless some brand awareness campaign is conducted in parallel.
Hope this helps,
Daniel
