No matter how popular or successful mobile becomes, search advertising will always exist and there will always be marketers that rely on it to create results. Paid search efforts are still strong today, even though according to a new study whose results were reported by Online Media Daily, the results are not really at their best these days. “Paid search, as measured by the number of companies running business-to-business (B2B) ad campaigns, dropped by more than 10% in 2012, according to a study released Wednesday.” It seems that fewer companies are making efforts to advertise through paid search now, even though the businesses that continue to run campaigns in paid search are still seeing significantly successful numbers.
The data comes from an annual B2B Optify study, which reports analysis of Google search market share. It appears that for businesses that are still running B2B campaigns, paid search “saw strong contributions to visits and leads, as well as an above average conversion rate.” Paid search made these contributions in the following manner; 23% contribution to visits, 16% contribution to leads, and other sources contributed the remainders, 77% and 84%.
The conversion rate for paid search advertising averaged about 2.34% and 3.58% for 75%. However, engagement rates, as measured by the amount of page views for each visit, dropped a bit during last year. It appears that things like Google product listing ads and social media drive more traffic to business sites, as they have for some time now.
For B2B marketers however, it seems that social media has not had the same impact that is has had in the B2C world. The excitement over social media can cause some confusion, making everyone believe that it has to be the best answer for their marketing needs. However, for B2B marketers, social media only accounted for about 5% of traffic and leads for sites. Of this 5%, Facebook contributed most with 54%, while the business-centered network LinkedIn only contributed 8%.
It seems that with paid search dropping for B2B marketers, the best solution has become email marketing, as engagement rates reached as high as an average of 3.75 views per visit, and the conversion rate for email averaged at 2.9% for B2B marketers. Though many would think that social media would be the next step in the right direction for any type of marketing, it seems that for B2B email is the way to go.
As paid search declined in 2012, so did the amount of money that B2B marketers invested into the marketing platform. Marketers looking to reach other businesses have started to look for a better solution to their marketing needs, hoping that maybe paid search advertising will rise again. Email seems the best candidate for B2B marketers to put their trust in at the moment, but what the future has in store for paid search is unknown.
The data in Optify’s report comes from an analysis of more than 62 million visits, 215 million page views, and 350,000 leads for over 600 B2B websites.
