One in three companies are failing to invest adequately in online marketing despite it being one of the most effective – and cost-effective – types of marketing, according to a survey.
The survey, commissioned by Crafted Media, a full-service creative and marketing agency, reveals that 88.8% of those surveyed believe online marketing to be either ‘very important’ or ‘quite important’, with 75.6% rating non-online advertising as important. Despite this, almost two thirds (60%) of companies said they spend less than a quarter of their overall marketing budget on online marketing techniques.
Eighty-three percent of people think their website is an effective marketing tool, and yet two thirds (60%) monitor traffic to their website and only about four in 10 (39.5%) optimise their websites using search-engine optimisation (SEO) techniques – whereby a company can improve its website’s Google ranking for popular searches through the repetition of the keywords used in its content.
Less than one in 10 (9%) said they implement pay-per-click advertising campaigns.
Almost a third (32.8%) admitted they neither carried out search-engine optimisation work nor Pay Per Click advertising – meaning they could be missing out on website sales and/or enquiry opportunities.
Brad Warwick, co-founder and business development director at Crafted Media, says online marketing can be the most effective, and cheapest, way of generating targeted enquiries and sales.
“In the current economic climate, where every marketing penny needs to be spent wisely, many companies underestimate the power of an effective website or online marketing campaign,” he says.
“But you don’t have to spend a lot of money to generate online sales and enquiries. We have helped a number of our clients, from commercial property companies to online retailers, increase their online revenue, while decreasing their online marketing spend.”
Warwick believes that the key to online marketing success is to make your website as accessible and easy to use as possible, and then implement and monitor targeted SEO techniques.
“Online marketing can be perceived as a dark art, but understanding your customer’s requirements and directing both them and search engines to the most relevant content of your website produces results.”
