Yes, Retailers, Paid Search is Working – Big Time!
The term Return on Investment isn’t just some catchphrase thrown around conference rooms and offices for the heck of it. The success of any business is reliant upon its ability to earn back more than it dishes out. Since the notion of “to make money you have to spend money” is – in many ways – a hard truth, online retailers have to decide what to spend time, money and resources on, in order to raise their bottom line. Atop the list of expenditures, typically, is your paid search budget. As another year closes (and the holiday season looms), has paid search proven that it deserves to cling to the arms of virtually every major online retailer in the industry?
Yes, it has. And here’s why.
Paid Search Works – The Proof Is In the Pudding, err, Numbers
Surveys are a great way to determine the effectiveness of a product or service. One massive and recent survey, conducted by Forrester Research and shop.org, included 81 online retailers, with nearly half of those retailers earning more than $100 million in web revenues. In other words, the participants in the survey were not new to the business.
Of those surveyed, nearly all (99%) reported spending at least some money on pay-per-performance placement, with close to 1/4th dedicating more than half of their budgets to paid search. And there’s a reason why: 2013 was a very good year for paid search. 75% of those surveyed said that their paid search efforts were more fruitful in 2013 than in the previous year. Another 16% said it was equally as effective over the course of the last two years, while only 8% reported a downturn.
What this means is that paid search isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. More than that, paid search has become the go-to for your marketing needs. If you want to compete, you have to invest heavily in paid search, because your competitors surely are. And it’s working for them.
Adding Mobile To The Mix
We’ve spoken earlier this year about how last year’s holiday shopping season showed a significant push toward mobile. How, then, can online retailers reach and connect to their customers and prospects best via phones and tablets?
The answer seems to be with email marketing.
Yes, email marketing, one of the original forms of web advertising, is demonstrating its prowess and longevity. Online retailers surveyed reported that a resounding 42% of their emails were opened with smartphones, and 17% on tablets, meaning “mobile” as a whole outperformed the desktop computer.
That means that email campaigns are a key tactic toward engaging mobile consumers. This is interesting to note, because mobile apps were believed to be the mobile avenue of choice for the future consumer. It appears, however, that no matter where or how a consumer browses the internet, the three major tenets remain king:
Search. Email. Organic traffic.
Giving Your Customers A Full Picture
Paid search is just one of the ways to reach your customers. Yes, it’s one of the most effective ways, but you also want to rank high organically, and want to have in place an emailing system that encourages your customers to sign up to remain connected.
That’s a lot to try to master, but if you do master it, you’re providing your customers with a full picture of your brand and service. OperationROI can help you give your customers that full and complete picture. Call us at 1-888-277-5429 or fill out our contact form to learn more.
