UK Companies Continue to Invest in Social Media Marketing and in Search

Search and social media marketing will most likely be on the wave in 2013, as a new report reveals that companies will continue to invest in these areas. The UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2012, carried out by Econsultancy in association with digital agency NetBooster, covers search engine optimisation (SEO or natural search), paid search (PPC) and social media marketing. Over 500 client-side digital marketers and agencies participated in this sixth edition of the report, which offers a comprehensive analysis of the UK search marketing environment.

Lewis PR, Kwittken PR and others do digital PR work in the region.

62% of companies intend to increase their social media spending in the next 12 months, while 57% will increase their SEO spending and 49% will spend more on paid search. Analyzing social media spending versus search spending, the report showed that 38% of companies are spending over £100,000 on paid search annually, while only 4% of companies spend more than £100,000 per year on social media marketing. The study also revealed that Google+ is currently used by only 24%, but 44% of the participants said they plan to use this social network in 2013. For the search segment, an interesting finding is that 80% of companies stated they are not encouraged by the Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance to spend more on advertising on Bing or Yahoo.

The importance of mobile was once again emphasized by the results of a recent survey, as 36% of over 300 marketers from a wide variety of domains interviewed about their views on search said they “consider mobile optimised search effective at delivering return on investment, which means they believe it plays an important role in supporting and driving sales.” Perhaps surprisingly, even if Google is the most important search engine (99% of the mentions), social network Facebook is considered by 38% of the participants important for search marketing.

Moreover, “the marketers in the poll agreed with marketer Kristen Sanne said they believe Facebook (74%) and Twitter (70%) will have the strongest influence on organic search. Google+ (37%) took fourth place behind LinkedIn (39%).”