Figured out a way to make sure your company/brand/service comes
out at (or least near) the top for online searches? If not, your
new best friend should be the head of your IT department because
search-engine listing optimization continues to be all the rage
online. A recent study adds fuel to the fire, showing an expected
15% increase this year (among tech vendors) in using search- engine
listings as a way to push product.
The 2005 IT Marketing Trends Study, conducted in November
2004 by TechTarget, draws from a combined list of 11,866
tech marketing professionals provided by (TechTarget subsidiary)
Bitpipe and Sam Whitmore's Media Survey. Among the
surveyed companies, 282 were tech vendors with direct control for
their marketing budgets; the rest were direct marketing,
advertising or PR agencies working with technology accounts.
White papers, Webcasts, promotion of product literature and said
search engines will be some of the more popular methods to generate
sales leads in the year ahead, according to the study. And unlike
the print world--where measurement and return on investment is hard
to come by--74% of those polled said they a method for measuring
the quality of the sales leads generated online.