A new market search has indicated that 81% of organisations tie search engine marketing metrics to the evaluation of their search marketing employees.

Published: 13 Sep 2005

A new market search has indicated that 81% of organisations tie search engine marketing metrics to the evaluation of their search marketing employees.

According to the findings of a study, iProspect-sponsored executive survey conducted by JupiterResearch, - A full 4 out of every 5 search engine marketers have the evaluation of their performance tied to some search engine marketing metric; Only 8% of search engine marketers whose annual online media budgets are greater than $1 million are not evaluated on search engine marketing metrics, while 22% of search engine marketers whose annual online media budgets are less than $1 million are not evaluated on search engine marketing metrics; 1 out of 2 search engine marketers are evaluated on website traffic volume and/or top search engine ranking; 4 out of 10 search engine marketers are evaluated on ROI or total sales generated by their search engine marketing efforts; Just 1 to 2 in 10 search engine marketers are evaluated on offline results generated by their search engine marketing efforts.

JupiterResearch surveyed search engine marketers and agencies.

Terming some of the findings as surprising, the company says: "While individual search marketing campaigns are evaluated using these metrics (traffic or rankings), iProspect did not expect the individuals managing these campaigns to be measured more often by these means to an end, rather than the bottom line value their efforts netted their organisations."

Taken aback by the findings, iProspect president Rob Murray said, "We expected that business results would be the big factor in search marketer performance evaluation since this discipline has significant costs associated with it -- costs that organizations would ostensibly need to justify in order to continue investment in it. This is especially surprising given that the organizations participating in this survey have dedicated search marketing resources and budgets." However, the company stated that iProspect recognises that business results might not be employed in the evaluation of search engine marketers if the organisation is unable to accurately tie business results back to search engine marketing activities.

It was stated that that there is a direct correlation between searches conducted on the web and offline transactions.

iProspect's director of algorithmic search, Dr. Naga Krothapalli said that organisations are missing an opportunity to motivate search marketers to generate cross-channel conversions, which may suggest that at many organisation search engine marketing is not effectively integrated with offline marketing. Also, if organisations do not recognize offline transactions generated by online searches, they are most likely under-investing in the search marketing channel, said Krothapalli.