Why Search Engine Marketing Can Be Your Life Preserver in the Down Turn

04/13/2009

Since the U.S. economy started to decline, retailers have been looking at different ways in which they can maintain their competitive edge and grow their sales. Some would even be happy if they could maintain their current sales figures just so they can stay afloat.

Two solutions that are helping these companies achieve their marketing goals are paid search and natural search optimization. Internet Retailer has just released their latest search engine marketing survey in which over 200 Web retailers, chain retailers, catalog companies, and consumer brand manufacturers participated.

Economists had been arguing whether or not the country was heading into a recession for quite some time, but once it became apparent that the U.S. was in the middle of a severe recession, 41.9 percent of retailers claim their most effective form of advertising has been paid search engine marketing. The survey also states that 35.6 percent of those polled say search engine marketing is performing as well as it had back in September of 2008 although 22.5 percent claim it is performing worse. One of the reasons why people prefer paid search in a down economy is due to the fact that you are better able to scale your efforts in order to respond to any sudden changes in the market.

Another interesting finding in the study is that many retailers are investing in search engine optimization (SEO) as the economy continues to worsen. The results of the survey show that 55.3 percent of participators plan to increase their funding for SEO in order to achieve better natural search results. Retailers who stated the amount they spend in this area will remain the same were 35.9 percent while 30 percent claimed they are going to decrease funding for SEO.

Some search engine marketing analysts admit that they don’t quite understand why more retailers are turning to search engine optimization during the recession. While paid search engine marketing allows companies to change their strategies instantly, SEO is a time consuming process. The logic is that if these businesses can improve their natural search ranking now, it will cost them less to maintain in the future, while paid ads are a constant expenditure.

This leads to the question. Which marketing method is better? Retailers find that search engine marketing is going to be an important strategy when dealing with the hard times ahead. Even so, many of them are finding that they have faith in alternative methods of boosting sales. 55.2 percent of retailers polled stated that they think email marketing will perform better than search during the recession. 24.3 percent claim that affiliate marketing is going to do better than search in the upcoming year.

One finding that has really baffled some experts is the 30.5 percent who believe social networking will perform better than search engine marketing. Based on the survey, the consensus seems to be that because retailers perceive social networking as less expensive, they expect that more people will take advantage of it as they find themselves with fewer funds to work with.

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