Search Engine Marketers Not Integrating Efforts With Offline Channels

Despite reports detailing the strong power of integrating search marketing and offline channels (go here for an example), 45 percent of search engine marketers who responded to a recent Jupiter Research survey said they don’t integrate their search marketing efforts with offline channels. The online survey was completed by 289 search marketers. Here are some more findings of the report.

* Of the 55 percent who do integrate their search marketing efforts with at least one offline marketing channel, direct mail was the favored channel (34 percent), followed by magazine/newspaper advertising (29 percent), and television and radio advertising (both 12 percent);

* 19 percent cited “lack of budget” as the reason for a lack of integration, followed by “lack of human resources” (15 percent), “hadn’t considered” (13 percent), “lack of senior management buy-in” (11 percent), and “separate people managing search marketing and offline channels” (11 percent);

* 58 percent said they favor images when optimizing various digital assets, followed by press releases (32 percent) and videos (20 percent);

* 84 percent of the search marketers said they prominently include the company Web address in offline marketing initiatives;

* 26 percent said they use the same keywords in offline campaigns as those used in search marketing campaigns in their integration efforts; and

* 24 percent of the participating companies don’t participate in offline marketing at all.