SEM Studies & Research

SEMPO Canada, the Canadian Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (www.sempo.ca), needs your input to help grow the awareness and use of search engine marketing services by Canadian companies and organizations.

To date only 60 companies in Canada have answered the SEMPO Survey on Search Marketing. We’re Canadian, we can do better than that!

Time is running out. We NEED your support to get an accurate and trustworthy sample size.

Please take the time to answer the following survey, now:
http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/research/sempo_research/sempo_2007_state/

Why is this survey so important?
Canadians do not get Search Engine Marketing! We need to know why. There is a lack of understanding of the benefits and value Search Engine Marketing offers. As a result SEMPO Canada, a non-profit division of SEMPO.org, has raised the funds to invest in identifying how Canadian companies view and use search engine optimization and marketing. An international study has been commissioned which is now cross-segmented to include and isolate results specifically from Canadians . The results of this survey will be published by SEMPO in a free report on the status of Search Marketing in Canada. We really need your help to increase the number of Canadian respondents in order to provide valuable feedback to the Canadian Search Marketing Industry as a whole.

Your participation counts more than you think.

If you are willing, we ask you to please blog about this survey. Feel free to use copy from this e-mail or from this blog post.

Lastly, please email people who you know in Canada personally to ask them to take the survey. We appreciate any help you can give us!

With your help, we are hoping to bring the sample size of Canadian respondents up to (at least) 100 in the last week of the survey. Deadline of the survey is February 1, 2008.

More on SEMPO Canada:
SEMPO Canada, the Canadian Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is a non-profit association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing in Canada. This Working Group was founded in November 2006 by Ken Jurina and Alexandre Brabant and focuses on improving the growth, awareness and understanding of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in Canada, including best practices in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Link Building, and Pay Per Click Management, and how it uniquely pertains and is of relevance to Canadians worldwide across any sector, vertical or industry.

Your help means a lot to us in improving the growth of Search Marketing in Canada.

Thank you for your support,

Alexandre Brabant & Ken Jurina
Co-Chairs SEMPO Canada

Canadian Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization
www.SEMpo.ca
www.SEMpo.org

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I have been a strong supporter this year of the 4th Annual State of the Search Market Survey. In this role, I would really like if you could take a few minutes of your time and fill out the Survey, especially if your are Canadian. A special portion was created for Canadian advertisers this year and we will soon be able to report back on it and assess the state of the Search Marketing Market in Canada. Here are some great reasons why it’s worth 25 minutes of your time to complete the survey:

You could win a 8 Gb iPod Touch

You could win one free pass to a North American Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference

You’ll be the first to receive the summarized results of North America’s most comprehensive snapshot of the search marketing industry

You need to let Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and the other major search players know your thoughts, observations, and concerns about where search is and where it’s going. We have heard directly from them and they all rely on this survey for information!

The survey is conducted by Radar Research, and all responses are kept strictly confidential. All results are aggregated and anonymized. The more people who complete the survey, the better the data we’ll be sharing with you.

Also, please pass along the invitation to any clients or friends who also use search as a marketing channel - this survey is not limited to SEMPO members.  If you have any questions about the survey, please contact . You can also reach Kevin Lee, SEMPO Director and Survey Team Lead () or Gordon Hotchkiss, SEMPO Chairperson () for more information about the Survey and how the data will be used.

Thanks for your support.

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It is no secret to anyone that Canada is one of the most connected country in the world. Canada is also one of the world’s most advanced online cultures. Broadband penetration is over 60%, and more than 63% of the population uses the Internet. But online advertising has been slow to take off-until now.

The latest Canada Online Advertising report from Research & Markets analyzes the trends that are quickly changing the once slow-to-change Canadian Internet marketing and media world.

According to Laura Wood, Senior Manager from Research and Markets Ltd, online advertising didn’t really take off in Canada, partly because advertisers’ options were limited. Linguistic and cultural differences between French Canada and other parts of the country also initially inhibited online development.

But now the environment is changing and Canadian businesses are recognizing the potential of the Web.

Key questions the “Canada Online Advertising” report addresses:

-How much is spent on Internet advertising and commercial e-mail in Canada?
-What are the prospects for future spending?
-How are search and display options changing for Canada’s online advertisers?
-How does online advertising spending vary in different regions of Canada?
-What factors continue to hold back the development of Canadian online advertising?
And many others.

For a complete overview of this report click on:
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/product/09313d/canada_online_advertising

If you want to order the Canada Online Advertising report, here are some more info:

Pricing:
Electronic : EUR 744

There are three (3) easy ways to place your order:

1] Order online at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/product/09313d/canada_online_advertising

2] Order by fax: Print an Order form from http://www.researchandmarkets.com/product/09313d/canada_online_advertising and Fax to +353 1 4100 980

3] Order by mail: Print an Order form from http://www.researchandmarkets.com/product/09313d/canada_online_advertising and post to Research and Markets Ltd. Guinness Center, Taylors Lane, Dublin 8. Ireland.

Related report also available from Research and Markets:

Advertising in Canada - http://www.researchandmarkets.com/product/09313d/advertising_in_canada

For more information, please contact Laura Wood:

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Every time Gord Hotchkiss, President of Enquiro based in Kelowna (BC) Canada, write an article, you can be confident that he is going to hit the nail right on the head. In his most recent article on Ad Agencies and Search Marketing, Gord mentions that Ad Agencies are far from “getting” search and follow search marketing best practices. Even when they include search, for as little as they do, they miss the mark by a mile. It is especially dramatic when it comes to budgeting for it. Media plans & budgets are based on arbitrary numbers which are not a reflection of comprehensive business objectives. According to Gord, “Search dollars should be the first ones in, not the last. Take as much search inventory as you can get. Judge your costs per acquisition not against your top performing keywords, but against your other channels, both online and offline. If even the marginal search traffic is generating a lower CPA, beg, borrow and steal as much budget as you can and top up search. Only then should you move from “pull” (prospects holding up their hands to purchase through search) to “push” (trying to persuade latent prospects to purchase). Only put restrictions on your search campaign if you’re absolutely certain that another channel can exceed its effectiveness.”

Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro

For a review of all the benefits for doing Search Marketing, budgeting for it as well providing a perspective on the utilization of search to reach branding objectives, take a minute to read the article.

If you are still up for it, take a minute to read this: Search And the Digital CPG Shelf. It is about the utilization of Search Marketing for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), an area that has historically never used Search Marketing. The findings of the study are quite revealing and will convince the most skeptics. 

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Every Monday morning, I get a newsletter that I truly look forward to receive: The Monday Morning Memo from the Wizards of Ads. Unlike everything else I receive through various sources, The Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads offers a unique experience in our customers’ brain where Roy Williams dissects the human nature needs, behaviors and give us ways to better connect with our customers with an increased understanding of what they really want to satisfy. In most cases, customers’ needs go way beyond what they would say to define it. You need that extra layer of understanding in order to adjust your offer accordingly. This newsletter is awesome and I heartedly recommend it. 

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I just got another search marketing study today. This one was coming from SEMPO Institute which presents Piper Jaffray’s latest search study. It shows how search is the second most commonly used application on the Web with 550 million searches daily in the United States. They have identified key trends in the search industry which you might be interested in:

Search is the new portal

Search is becoming a branding tool

Google’s dominance is increasing

Local search remains a looming opportunity

New search technologies are likely to expand the field

As far as this study suggests, search reach surpasses any other form of web applications as presented in the graph below:

On the other hand, people spend very little time on search pages, which explains why time spent is so low. The fastest you find what you are looking for, the fastest you leave a common SERP (Search Engine Results Page). If you think about it, this means 2 things. Online users are getting more savvy at searching and spend less time doing it. They use more words to further define their search queries. This is consistent with the trend from the last few years. It also means that Search Engines are getting better at providing relevant search results for a wider range of search queries.

Also, as part of this research, it shows the Online Advertising forecast in the upcoming years:

What does this mean if you are an advertiser?
Since users are using more words to define any given query in a search engine, it means that advertisers would need to build a Search Marketing plan around a wider variety of search terms. Targeting the tail (of search queries) is the term that has been used to describe this concept. It is both a burden and an opportunity since it involves more work from the advertiser (and/or their Search Marketing supplier) but allows them to reach their entire audience on very targeted (niche) search terms. It also means advertisers need to allocate more funds into their Search Marketing plan in order to cover both paid search and organic listings. 

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