Search engine advertising and email marketing are the channels seen to have the best returns on investment by marketers, MarketingSherpa has revealed.
Its research, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2008, found that search and email were rated highly by advertisers operating in the business-to-consumer space.
MarketingSherpa emphasised the fact that many respondents seemed to be planning increases in spending on search engine marketing, in spite of recent reports suggesting the sector is unlikely to see the high levels of growth experienced in previous years.
It said: "Search may end up faring well through the recession, however, within a larger overall shift from brand tactics toward the more dependable and measurable direct online tactics."
UK marketers spent £981 million on paid search advertising in the first six months of 2008, figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau revealed last year.
This represented a 28 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2007.... read full details »
Automotive firms should consider investing in internet marketing to reach young, web-savvy consumers.
This is one of the suggestions put forward by Microsoft following a survey it commissioned from KRC Research.
The poll asked 400 young US adults born in the 1980s and 1990s - the so-called millennial generation - about their online preferences when it came to communications from and with automotive manufacturers and dealers.
Nine in ten said they wanted to see websites offer details on car purchase options and service history, with other respondents expressing preferences for communicating with companies via instant messaging, social networks and blogs.
"For automakers to court these tech-savvy consumers, they need to embrace newer technologies as a way to communicate and sell more effectively to them," said Microsoft's Dave Graff.
About 71 per cent of millennial consumers read or watch user-generated content online, according to a study conducted by Deloitte last year.... read full details »
Good e-commerce link bait is not necessarily likely to end up on the front page of Digg, it has been suggested.
According to Armando Roggio of Practical eCommerce, link bait for retail websites is more likely to involve specific product descriptions, blogs and how-to columns than Digg-friendly content such as "outrageous" articles and top ten lists.
"Ultimately, an e-commerce site can create and generate content that attracts both consumers and links," Mr Roggio said.
"Those extra links will count as extra votes for a URL's PageRank, improving how that URL performs on SERPs."
The expert said that e-commerce link bait will be more likely to be emailed between friends and referred to on specialist websites than posted on Digg.
E-commerce sites may fare better with link bait if they have been built with integration with social media in mind from the outset, according to Andy Boyd of the Matchbox blog.... read full details »
User-generated content and social media in general could be useful for travel firms hoping to enhance their search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies, according to one expert.
Scott McNeely of Viator recently told Eye for Travel that user-generated content can offer the fresh, relevant web content that search engines appear to favour.
He went on to claim that ignoring the benefits of social media could be detrimental to the travel sector in general.
"I don't think you can survive in the travel space for much longer without a user-generated content and social strategy," Mr McNeely stated.
"It's no longer a question of 'if' you go down this path, but a question of 'what' and 'how quickly'."
According to the expert, typical user-generated content that can be used to good effect on travel sites include reviews, videos and photos.
Over two-thirds of travel organisations plan to invest more in SEO, according to a study published by Frommer's last year.... read full details »
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