Survey: Enterprises Struggling to Prove Search Marketing ROI and Find Reliable Agencies

A new survey indicates that enterprise marketers are investing in a number of channels ahead of search marketing and the challenges associated with proving ROI and finding a reliable partner may be playing a role in their decisions.

The “Enterprise Marketing Survey 2016: Search Marketing Results” conducted by Clutch has discovered that just 47 percent of enterprise marketers use SEO. This was less than the amount who invest in website marketing (84 percent), social media (78 percent), email (60 percent) and more.

The top concern for enterprise marketers in regards to search marketing is proving ROI (18 percent). Finding a reliable agency or consultant (14 percent) and upfront costs (13 percent) were also named obstacles by marketers.

More than a quarter of respondents (28 percent) claim that traffic volume is the most important SEO metric gauged in terms of proving ROI. Leads and conversions, onsite engagement, and keyword rankings were also commonly used metrics.

B2B Marketers Prioritize Improving Marketing ROI

Earlier this year, B2B marketers made it a priority to improve their ROI over the remainder of 2016. The “Assessment of Excellence in Marketing” study published by Fanatics Media showed that 35 percent of B2B marketers from mid-sized organizations had made improving marketing ROI their top goal.

Nearly 37 percent of these respondents claimed that they would require analytics in order to achieve their objective. Sixty-one percent of the B2B marketers surveyed said that their company puts less than 10 percent of their annual toward marketing initiatives.

The majority of mid-sized B2B marketers stated that they spend between 11 and 20 percent of their annual profit on marketing.