72% of Search Marketers Will Spend More on Search Engine Marketing Technology in 2012

According to BrightEdge’s “2012 Search Marketers Survey,” nearly three in four search engine marketers will spend more on search engine marketing technology in 2012 vs. 2011.

The survey, which got the responses of 360 marketers across retail, technology, financial services, hospitality, agencies and other industries, found that 72 percent of respondents will spend more on search engine marketing technology in 2012 than they did in 2011. Meanwhile, 26 percent said they will spend the same and 2 percent said they will spend less.

This highlights two things, according to BrightEdge: 1) brands are recognizing that search marketing has a strong ROI and 2) the maturity of enterprise SEO platforms has reached mainstream adoption in the market.

In response to a question about whether marketers will focus on comparing and optimizing ROI from organic and paid search in 2012, 90 percent of respondents said yes and 10 percent said no.

Social media is obviously important to respondents, with a whopping 98 percent saying social media matters to their organization’s marketing strategy, and just 2 percent saying social media doesn’t matter to their organization’s marketing strategy.

Digging a bit further into the topic of social media, BrightEdge asked respondents: “How important will social signals (Likes, Tweets, Google +1s) be to your SEO in 2012 vs. 2011?” Fifty-three percent said social signals would be more important in 2012, while 31 percent said these signals would be much more important, and 16 percent said the importance of these signals would remain unchanged.

A separate piece of research from Econsultancy found that 62 percent of digital marketing agencies say social signals have a moderate impact on their (or their clients’) search and social media strategies, while 25 percent said it had no impact and 12 percent said it had major impact.

The BrightEdge study found that 72 percent of marketers target global audiences (that is, users in more than one country), while 28 percent do not.

The study also found that 51 percent of respondents said enterprise-grade infrastructure to their marketing organization will be more important this year, while 32 percent said it would be much more important.

Sources:

http://www.brightedge.com/2012-search-marketers-survey-results

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8527-social-signals-and-search-what-is-the-impact