The Best Marketing Technique of All Time

Have you ever advertised in a magazine before? If so, you know how expensive it can be, especially if you choose a popular publication. Was it worthwhile? Would you do it again? As you ponder these questions, consider the following:

Suppose you were invited to place an ad in a very popular magazine each month for an entire year. The ad will cost you $5,000 per month. Would you consider it? What if hundreds of millions of people subscribed to this magazine every month? Would that make it more appealing to you? What if the magazine had an entire section devoted specifically to your industry and you were literally guaranteed that hundreds of thousands or even millions of potential customers would see your ad each month? Starting to sound like a pretty good magazine, isn't it? Now suppose that the readership of this magazine grew by about 10% last year and that those readers read the magazine 27% more often than they did the previous year, thus significantly increasing your opportunity for new business year after year. Would you be tempted to advertise in such a magazine every year?

For no extra charge, this magazine not only displayed your ad with your contact information each month, but actually included dozens or even hundreds of specific pages about your company, products, and services. The information would be located in an appendix where readers could quickly and easily read all about your business simply by turning a few pages. Is it reasonable to assume that most experienced marketers would jump at an opportunity to get this kind of value for that price? It's safe to say that they would.

For those of you who have done any advertising at all, this probably sounds ridiculous. No magazine in the world could offer that much value for such a low price. Yet, as amazing as it sounds, these benefits are exactly what search engine marketing brings to your business. Let's look at how search marketing compares to the magazine ad we just described:

• Search engines are extremely popular. In fact, about 90% of the entire online population uses search engines, making it the second most popular online activity after email.
  
  
• Literally hundreds of millions of people use search engines (see graph below) each month to find things they want to buy. In fact, 76% of online shoppers who use Google, the world's most popular search engine, research purchasable products.
  
• Of those hundreds of millions of people, thousands or even millions are searching for information specific to your industry and products each and every month. If your website is ranked high in search engines, you're literally guaranteed that these prospects will see your ad.
  


• From August 2004 to August 2005 the number of people in the United States who used search engines increased by over 10 million. However, during that same timeframe, search engines were used 27% more often than the previous year. (Go try to find a magazine that can match those kinds of figures.)
  
  
• Every time a potential prospect sees your company in a search engine, he or she has the opportunity to quickly click through to your website, which contains dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of optimized pages about your company, products, and services—literally at their fingertips.
  
  
• Every time a prospect finds your website from a search engine, you have an immediate opportunity to either make a sale or capture a qualified lead. They don't even have to stop what they're doing to contact you.
  
  

All of a sudden, finding the kind of value mentioned earlier is not so ridiculous any more. What makes search marketing even more compelling is the fact that both consumers and businesses are no longer looking to traditional means of advertising. These days, they're looking to the Internet. As Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com put it, "Beyond all of the positive attributes of Web advertising, like incredibly trackable ROI, the fact is business decision makers don't look to TV and newspapers anymore as their top sources of information; they go online."

This observation by Jim Spanfeller is well-supported by additional data. In a recent survey conducted by Millward Brown, people mentioned search engines as their first choice when researching products more than any other method. Surprisingly, it doesn't even matter what kinds of products you sell or how expensive those products are. Search is by far the most popular choice for both B-to-B and B-to-C consumers. In fact, even when buying products that are over $50,000, 60% of B-to-B buyers said that search was the first source they used to learn about these high-end products while 72% used search engines to research products under $500.

The real reason search engine marketing is so popular today is that it works. When done properly, search marketing indefinitely delivers large volumes of qualified prospects to your website every single month. This group of potential customers grows significantly every year. In fact, online product research conducted by consumers last year was responsible for driving $180.7 billion in offline spending and $106.5 billion in direct online consumer spending. These figures increase each year.

In addition to being the most effective method of new business delivery, search engine marketing, according to Piper Jaffrey, will also cost you less money per lead than any other form of direct marketing. They estimate that the average cost per lead in search marketing is only $0.45. By comparison, direct mail will cost you almost $10.00 per lead. With numbers like these, it doesn't take an MBA to figure out how to get the biggest bang for your marketing buck.

When all is said and done, search engine marketing may not be the best marketing technique of our time—it may, in fact, be the best marketing technique the world has ever known! If you're already involved with search marketing, it's a good time to enhance your program. If you're not yet involved with search marketing, it's way past time that you became involved. If you have questions about how search marketing can help your business grow, don't hesitate to contact us at 10x Marketing. We're happy to help in any way we can.

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