Just where will your Online Marketing focus be in 2012?

“How are you going to promote your business online this year”

We’re all thinking about our online business development. How can you start to market your business online.

Where do your promote your products and services to attract the right customers?

Do you use Social Media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Adwords as traffic generating strategies?

With so much confusion and varying recommendations from ‘experts’, no wonder the majority of Sunshine Coast businesses and businesses all over Australia are in a quandry. What is online marketingm how do I do it, where do I start, what’s the right information?

In late December 2011 and early Jan 2012, Fortune 3 conducted a neat little survey with 270 e-commerce retailers on online marketing. They were asked the following questions.

Where Will Your Primary Online Marketing Focus be in 2012?

• 56% said they would focus on SEO (search engine optimisation) to drive more customers to their website(s).
• 15% said they would be using SM (social media) as a means to generate leads and build a customer email list.
• 15% indicated they would spend their online marketing focus on Google Adwords citing Pay Per Click as a quick way to get instant traffic.
• 7% said email marketing is going to be their focus.
• 4% said they would be using video marketing and affiliate marketing to drive traffic. Considering YouTube gets around 3 billion views a day and something like 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute of the day, it’s a huge market.

Where Was Your Best Online Marketing Return on Investment in 2011?

• 30% said Search Engine Optimization (SEO) brought in the best results.
• 22% said they saw no returns on the money they shelled out for online advertising and marketing via all channels. That’s a staggering 210 businesses who spent money and did not get a result. This tells me there is a common problem for small business owners who just are not getting the right advice on how to efficiently spend money on online marketing to increase their business profitability.
• 19% (218) businesses said they saw the biggest ROI when they used Google Adwords Pay Per Click marketing, sometimes referred to as Search Engine Marketing.
• 15% saw returns using Affiliate Marketing.
• 7% got results with Social Media like Twitter and Facebook.
• 7% also saw good results using email marketing. The report did not go into specifics about email marketing, as one of the biggest factors in getting results from email marketing is to have a good list of subscribers who value what it is you are promoting, selling and recommending.

Where Will The Majority of Your Budget Be Allocated in 2012?

This was an interesting one and shows diverse opinions across the range of respondents to the survey.

• 26% said they will spend most of their budget on Search Engine Optimization. Which is interesting as 56% said their focus would be on SEO. So that needs to be sorted out I reckon.
• 19% said they would hoe into PPC – Google Adwords. (TIP) the biggest secret to success with Adwords is to create specific landing pages that talk ONLY about the product or service you are advertising via the PPC ad. Do not send the clicks to your home page – ever!! – yet people still do this and rack up $1000′s in Adwords fees and get no results for their efforts. Onlinemarketizing can create specific Adwords campaigns that get results, save you money and we also teach you how to do it so you can manage your future campaigns in-house.
• 15% said they would be allocating money to web design, which is a broad topic to say the least. I’d like to see exactly what areas of website design they are focusing on. Build your Website on WordPress – that’s the hot tip. Website design in 2012 needs to focus on useability, a thorough understanding of human behaviour, ease of updating the website from a user perspective, be end user centric, integrates with Social Media (twitter, facebook, YouTube, podcasts and LinkedIn) and it must have a blog powered again by WordPress. ***essential ***
• 11% cited social media is a good place to spend money.
• 7% said email marketing was an area they would increase their online marketing budget in.

Where Will The Traffic Come From in 2012?

Quite an ambiguous question and all depends really on where the companies and businesses will allocate their budgets, how well they perform and if they are prepared to test their online advertising methods, learn from the mistakes and keep testing and being innovative.

Another focus would be to be cognisant of the involvement of third party suppliers who provide online marketing and advertising services.
(TIP**) stay glued at the hip with your advertising agency, get regular reports, get access to the advertising platform so you can see for yourself what the ads look like, how they are being used, where they are being used, what email open rates are, CTR, CPC and Conversions. This is your business, you’re paying the bills – get to know the facts.

The results of the question Where Will The Traffic Come From in 2012? are:

• 50% believe most of there online business will be generated via SEO.
• 30% are looking to Social Media for results.
• 15% are hoping that display advertising will fill their pockets with profit.

Wrap up…

So we can see from this that e-commerce retailers still look to search engines and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as the most effective form of online marketing to drive sales as well as a strategic traffic generating strategy and the best bet for a return on investment.

It seems from the report that e-commerce retailers don’t place much faith in the power of social media when it comes to spending advertising or promotional dollars, either that or they don’t understand the potential benefits of a social media presence and the impact it can have on their business.

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Article by John Miles.

Title: Just where will your Online Marketing focus be in 2012?
URL text: Online Marketing Advertising Budget Reviews 2011 2012 Forecast Where To Spend The Cash

Keywords: australian online shopping, Online Marketing, online marketing budget, seo,

John is a WordPress developer who creates the opportunity for Sunshine Coast business owners, as well as clients all across Australia, to create a sustainable internet business., John has written 118 awesome articles on this website.

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