Clickz has word of a new study out this morning from iProspect. The study finds that only 40% of search marketers are being evaluated on actual business goals. Instead of being evaluated on campaign ROI or total sales generated, success of search marketing campaigns tends to be based on total traffic to the web site as a result of the campaign or top search engine ranking.
The study goes on to surmise that search marketing campaigns are evaluated by intermediate results because marketers can’t tie conversions back to a campaign.
Unfortunately, this is the story with so many small-to-medium sized businesses. In one online marketing forum I belong to, many web site owners have given up on paid search marketing due to the inability to tie conversion and sales to paid campaigns.
Even many large corporations don’t have enough focus and resources dedicated to making sure they are tracking sales, conversion and ROI from their campaigns.
If you’re a beginner to paid search or online marketing, it’s imperative that you track sales, conversion and ROI from each marketing campaign. You should be able to track your paid search activities separate from your natural search activities, your banner advertising separate from your email marketing. I usually go a step or two further, evaluating each keyword I bid on in both Yahoo Search Marketing and Google Adwords, for example. After all, I don’t want to spend money on terms that aren’t producing a return on my investment.
