Report: Marketers Gain Confidence in Measuring the ROI of Paid Search

As marketers turn to paid search to drive brand awareness, new research indicates that they are gaining confidence in their ability to measure their efforts. The “2015 State of Search Marketing Report” published by SEMPO has found that two-thirds of marketers believe they are “good” at measuring the ROI of paid search. Furthermore, search is still at the top of their list of digital marketing tactics.

However, marketers are struggling to gauge the ROI of other channels, including SEO (45 percent) and email (44 percent). Display (29 percent) and social media (22 percent) were also listed as top challenges for marketers.

On October 27, the SEMPO Education Committee conducted a Google+ Hangout with video archive, discussing these results, as covered on Search Engine Land in late October.

In terms of channels, this is not the first publication to indicate that paid search is the easiest to measure for marketers.

The Challenge of Monitoring Success

In March 2015, Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud released the “Marketing Budgets 2015 Report,” which found that the majority of marketers (52 percent) considered themselves to be “good” at measuring the ROI of paid search.

The report also found that 44 percent thought that they were “good” at gauging the ROI of email at the time. This is the same percentage as cited in the “2015 State of Search Marketing Report.”

Paid Search and B2B Marketing

B2B marketers have been heavily engaging in paid search since the beginning of the year, according to the “State of Digital Marketing” report from Webmarketing123. In early 2015, about 56 percent of B2B marketers claimed they were practicing paid search.

About 15 percent stated that paid search had the biggest impact on their revenue. Furthermore, 37 percent said they could prove the ROI of their paid search efforts.