Ok, here we go… iSpionage’s first blog post!
For starters – Thanks for joining us on our surreal SEM trip. We started this to get a feel for search marketing behavior and usage in Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing & Microsoft adCenter – and that was it. It didn’t take long for us to realize that our view was myopic and that the people working on PPC are heavily involved in all areas of internet marketing.
But first – a special thank you to our new friends from Search Marketing Salon, Search Engine Strategies New York, as well as people in the SEM, SEO and social media communities for opening the curtains to our research. Your input, data and feedback has been so fantastic that like a five year old, I didn’t want to share my Easter candy. However, Leon and I agreed that we have to make some of our non-personal research available. AND ONLY with your personal request, will I forward you the full study results (minus names and companies for privacy of course). My email and phone number are at the bottom of this post.
Our research is based on personal interviews with company owners, C-level executives, VPs, directors, managers, and analysts from a Silk Flower web-based company and a Fortune 10 company to rouge marketing consultants and international media agencies.
On our trek to understand the whats, whys and hows of the PPC biosphere, this is what we have learned from the interviews we’ve conducted so far:
- Among the responses in terms of tools and services, most are looking for
- Ability to identify opportunities (still difficult with the current tools in the market)
- Geographic advertising data
- Better actionable data
- A full-service solution
- The average PPC user spends 20 minutes to 2 ½ hours per day on a given PPC campaign.
- Finding & retaining talented SEM/SEO personnel is difficult for most
- Search Engine Marketers are spread thin running:
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns
- Analytics
- Reporting (this is a biggie)
- SEM
- SEO
- Affiliate Marketing (most time consuming activity)
- Email campaigns
- And helping to put out fires
- Search Engine Land is the most universally read website in our survey
Well, that’s the VERY short of it. We would love your input if you feel that we missed some key points or want to take part in our current research. For the comprehensive report you can e-mail me directly at marcel at ispionage.com or call me at (408) 416-3800.
P.S. Because we’ve moved forward into the second phase of our research we are only making this report available through the last day of ad:tech San Francisco – that’s Thursday, April 17th.
P.P.S Over the next couple of weeks, we are also looking for people to use iSpionage for free in exchange for their feedback!
