81% of organizations tie search marketing metrics to marketer evaluations
Search engine metrics have been tied to how organizations fund marketing department budgets. Now, they’re being tied to the performance evaluation of individual marketers in those departments as well, according to a new study by search engine marketing firm iProspect and JupiterResearch. 81% of the organizations surveyed, all of which use search marketing, tie search engine marketing metrics to the evaluation of their search marketer employees, the study found.
In fact, the study determined, more organizations use the metrics of web site traffic and search engine rankings to measure marketer performance than they do the business results of sales and ROI. “I am taken aback by this finding,” says iProspect president Rob Murray. “We expected that business results would be a big factor in search market 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.”
Specifically, the study found that four out of five search engine marketers have evaluation of their performance tied to some search engine marketing metric. Only 8% of search engine marketers with annual online media budgets of greater than $1 million are not evaluated on search engine marketing metrics. 22% of search engine marketers with annual online media budgets of less than $1 million are not evaluated on search engine marketing metrics.
One out of two search marketers are evaluated on web site traffic volume and/or search engine ranking. A smaller number, four out of 10, are evaluated on ROI or total sales generated by their search engine marketing efforts.
And despite increasing recognition that online search marketing also drives offline sales, only one to two in 10 search engine marketers are evaluated on offline results. iProsepct study authors speculate that this could be due to difficulty the organization has in tying offline results back to online search marketing efforts.
That particular finding has two implications for organizations that use search marketing, according to Naga Krothapalli, iProspect’s director of algorithmic search. “Organizations are missing an opportunity to motivate search marketers to generate cross-channel conversions,” by the failure to integrate them effectively, Krothapalli says. “Second, if organizations do not recognize offline transactions generated by online searches, they are most likely under-investing in the search marketing channel,” Krothapalli adds.
The survey of search engine marketers was based on the responses of 636 qualified search engine marketers and 224 qualified search engine marketing agencies.
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