Survey Shows: SEO & Paid Search are Tactically Terrific

Are SEO & Paid Search Winning the Popularity Contest?

Since we started this company back in 2002, we saw the direction the world was taking and the growth that was likely to occur for SEO and Paid Search as important tools for marketers to generate leads. Way, way back in 2011, the Pew Research Center reported that 92% of online adults use search engines. And now, only 5 years later, Google processes roughly two trillion search queries a year, worldwide (not to mention all the other searches on the other search engines). So it’s more important than ever for marketers to have their product or service found by the right people at the right time. Evidenced from this recent survey by DemandWave (courtesy of an article in MarketingProfs) that I will discuss below, marketers across industries are clearly finding SEO & Paid Search to be valuable tactics for lead generation.

And the Marketing Survey Says

The survey was conducted in the United States, across a range of industries (including software with 39% of respondents) in November and December of 2016. There were 179 B2B marketers polled. Of the channels listed (Email, Organic Search, Social Media, Paid Search and Display Advertising), marketers ranked Email as the top (with 73% saying it generates the most leads), with Organic Search a close second (70%), Social Media and Paid Search nearly tied (55% and 54% respectively), and Display Advertising bringing up the rear (37%). Third-party validation that SEO & Paid Search (and OK, we’ll admit it, yes, Email and Social Media) are important tools to generate leads in B2B is always nice to see.

But What Kind of Content Generates Leads?

This survey also explored this question as well, and the answer may surprise you. Whitepapers were the top ranked lead generation tool at 53% of respondents stating they were the biggest driver (the other content types rated as follows: Webinars 50%, Case Studies 44%, Blogs 39%, Videos 35%, Infographics 31%). Which might seem strange as apparently, no one has any attention span left. But, it does make sense to us because if you’re about to buy a product, especially in the B2B sphere where a purchase might have six or seven zeros, you’d want to cross your t’s and dot your i’s and learn everything you can about a product, market, topic (etc.), and therefore download a whitepaper. So, whitepapers are still the king despite what naysayers say because if you really have a problem to solve, you’ll take the time necessary to read and think.

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