December 02, 2005 | Friday
Search engine marketing ROI: Even better than we can measure
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Events |Latitude Intelligence Network |Marketing |News |Online Sales |Search Expertise
This week’s issue of New Media Age trumpets some good news for online sales:
Online retail revenue in the UK will soar to between £3bn and £5bn this Christmas, according to reports from separate analysts. Interactive Media in Retail Group predicts online retail will be worth £5bn this Christmas, while Lycos forecasts revenues of £3.9bn for November and December 2005…
Despite large variations in predicted year-on-year growth, there’s consensus in all reports viewed by NMA that Christmas 2005 will see a record rise from just over £3bn spent online in the final two months of 2004.
The emphasis there is mine. Additionally, the NMA piece reveals that the latest data from Hitwise UK shows that visits to retail sites for the week ending 19 November are up 5% on the busiest week of 2004, with peak time for Christmas shopping yet to come.
Heather Hopkins, Director of Research of Hitwise UK, recently posted a rundown of the UK’s shopping comparison sites in the run up to Christmas. (Heather is someone we were very pleased to have on hand at our most recent Latitude Intelligence Network event. Our clients found her presentation hugely informative, and Heather’s contribution to the panel discussion was fantastic. Read her blog if you want a taste of her expertise on a regular basis.) I thought of Heather’s piece when I read Search Engine Watch Associate Editor Chris Sherman’s article on new players in shopping and comparison search. In it, Chris writes:
Despite the popularity and success of online retail, the vast majority of purchases continue to be made at brick and mortar stores. Most people continue to use shopping search and comparison tools to research products that they end up buying from their local merchants.
Think about this. While the ability to measure the ROI of a search campaign is great - we can track from the click through to purchase, easy as pie - we are bound to be missing out on a substantial amount of additional return. The day we can track from the click through to the drive to the local shopping centre and the handing over of cash at the till, then we will know the full, true return on search investment.
Bottom line: If you’re a ‘clicks and mortar’ retailer using search to drive customers to your site and your shops, pat yourself on the back for using the online marketing tool whose ROI is unquestionably greater than current measurement methods can verify.
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