Every once in a great while a new business book is published that just oozes with credibility and usefulness. Such is the case with Vanessa Fox's "Marketing in the Age of Google." Vanessa is a search engine optimization expert and former Google spokesperson. Her book takes off quickly, pointing out that 88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, but 85% of searchers click on organic (non-paid) results. Slightly over half (56%) of Google searches return no paid ads. Although $9.1 billion was spent on online advertising in 2007, and it is projected to reach $20.9 billion in 2013, improving performance with organic search results is the focus of her book.
Worldwide there are 131 billion searchers/month, 23 billion by Americans. About 12% of U.S. searches are focused on retail items, and 63% of search-related purchases occur offline. Essentially all searchers look at the first organic result, while only 50% look at the first paid result. Fox points out that searchers will tell you exactly what will compel them to buy your products - if only you will look for the answers. Information within Google Insights for Search and Google Trends can reveal the relative popularity of similar search terms, trends and seasonality in their popularity, where (geographically) most inquiries are coming from. Other sources for useful sights include Google Adwords (Fox suggests trying a few ads, if only for the information retrieved), Google Analytics (reports number of visits, time on site, number of pages visited, bounce rate), Compete.com (degree of competition associated with various search terms), and [...] (what sites and search terms are driving visitors to your site). [...] and others can help alert marketers to PR disasters in the making before they get too far.
Must reading, and ownership for any marketer.
Get more detail about Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy.
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