The Silicon Valley Insider, is reporting on a new online survey which showed that 59% of responding small businesses with Web sites still don’t buy search advertising, usually because they worry it will be too expensive or not “the best use of their marketing budgets.”
Here are the rest of the findings of a the survey which was sponsored by Microsoft:
- 59% of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use any paid search marketing
- Of those, 90% have never even attempted it.
- 70% of small business owners say they would rather do their own taxes than start a search marketing campaign
- 86% small business owners felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business.
- 75% believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers.
- 89 % feared keywords may become too expensive.
- 81% questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
- 25% of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
- 21% thought it would be too time consuming.
- 25% felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.
If these numbers are even somewhat correct, the search industry has a long way to grow and that is certainly good news for domainers
It’s even better news for those developed sites that sell advertising directly to local businesses.
I agree David, Ditto for niche directories. If the directory is properly designed advertising in a niche directory can help businesses avoid the need to do their own search marketing and will bring them the quality leads and conversions that they seek without having to become search marketing experts themselves.
Great news for the domainers with local sites, get it while the gettins good=)
Fear and/or ignorance have a price to pay.
No, it is actually great news for GOOGLE and YAHOO more so than for any developers on the local level of small mini niche sites… How exactly are business owners going to find your little site?? Unless you approach em, with a very good pitch — they won’t even spend $100 with you.
They will spend all of their money to the last cent with Google or Yahoo because they have heard about them and this companies provide the best analytics, customer support, etc.
If you really have a decent web site and traffic, you need to offer free advertising to all potential “smaller” business owners on the local level or at a reduced introductory rate of 25% – 50% discount if you want to hook them properly… Selling ads isn’t easy.
Domainers have been spoiled all this years with Google and Yahoo doing everything for them as well as parking companies doing everything else required in between.
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com/
“25% of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex”
There is merit to this belief. Yahoo’s paid search marketing is not intuitive and makes assumptions in setting up paid search that you cannot easily undo. MSN search provides more control, but neither interface is as user-friendly as Google’s.
That being said, per click costs are going up because there are many more advertisers today competing for a keyword than just 3 years go.
There are 2 primary reasons why local businesses don’t trust paid search;
1. Fear of their competitors maliciously clicking on their ads and making them pay for this wasted expenditure and draining of their marketing budgets as a result i.e. competitor sabotage
2. Scepticism in the ability of a very limited number of words conditional in seach ‘text ads’ to drive the real interest and differentiation small businesses need to make them the preferred choice, unless they have some killer and market differentiating proposition to sell, which most don’t have.
Word of mouth and other unorthodox and innovative media channels are the lifeblood of SME’s trying to make ends meet.
THe PPC model of 2001 is under tremendous scrutiny right now from a whole range of media auditors and tracking cookies that drill down to the actual purchase itself from PPC traffic.
As they say, what “sounds good’ – is often too good to be true. Paid listings, sponsorships and innovative banner ads and interactive mini-site experiences, will reemerge strongly in 2009 as advertisers go back to the basics of what makes a sale,and what is pure policital correct shenanigans.
I believe these stats. How many people do you run into that even know what a domain is let alone what search marketing is.
So again David is right… sell your space direct to advertisers.
Knock on their door rather than waiting for them to find you in an adsense ad.
That is a simple but brillian common sense, Rob. If domains stop thinking about easy PPC parking and start thinking about PPL, you could really latch on to some pretty steady income.
Rick said ” what is the value of a click if it translates to a $20M sale).
Enhanced paid listings made a fortune for Yellow Pages in the past, today this is simply nothing more than a power shift to the Internet for the same business model.
I suspect the first company that starts to offer this offline sales service to domainers willing to convert to ‘brick and mortar’ PPL exposure will really cream tremendous profits.
An affiliate PPL sale may require payment of, say, 30%, of the listing cost, but you’ll be surprised how many Joe the Plumbers there are out there with massive connections to many friends and associates.
Think about it, Online expenditure still takes only 7% of total Marcom revenue. Has anyone every really bothered to think “we are not taking the pie because Online is “measurable” (don’t start me on this, the hocus pocus of web measurability is a big joke), but because we are now the traditional media you are?”
When we talk about advertising on the internet as a business model, we are talking lets say from 1995-today.
Thar means online advertising has been around for 13 year.
It started with Banner advertising and paid links.
Then affildate programs came along.
Then GoTo.com came along in 1999 and the advent of PPC.
That’s been it in 13 years for internet advertising , and 9 years for PPC.
I think what this study shows its time for something new
Since it’s relevant to the discussion at hand, allow me to show; via a new kind of “search” (match) query field; what I believe the future of “search” holds:
MatchTo.com
This kind of targeting simplicity should take care of what the survey and other commentators have above already pointed out: Paid search has gotten too darn complicated and complex for the millions of average SMB/SMEs to bother with.
You’re right, Mike. It is time for something new.
Many Businesses here in Croatia have NO websites so I am looking forward to teach the people in Business how to use the Internet to their advantage.
Germany Businesses are doing well with the Online opportunity – as I was traveling trough Germany I have seen many great one word domain names of the .de Country code.
There is lots of money to be made with domain names.
To Your Success
“There is lots of money to be made with domain names.”
Sheeeeeeeeeez…please don’t tell anyone.