Whereas once the Internet was seen as the realm of IT geeks, it is now common for marketing managers to be heavily involved in the planning and implementation of online marketing activities, even to the point of learning to speak the lingo.

However, one area of online advertising has always struggled to secure its share of the marketing mix; SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has often been classified by businesses as being stuck somewhere between a website maintenance item and a legitimate marketing activity. That was, up until now.

Over the last six months, Reload Media has conducted a SEO Survey for business, and the results make for interesting reading.

79% of Queensland businesses surveyed now see SEO as part of their marketing mix, and only 14% of Queensland businesses have never undertaken any SEO in the past, down from 37% at the same time last year.

About this time last year, around 16% of businesses had no idea how they were positioned in the search engines, with that figure reduced to just 11% in 2009.

So whilst it appears that SEO has now become a legitimate part of the marketing mix, there’s still a way to go before it gets its fair share of the marketing budget, although the recent global economic meltdown may have helped its cause.

As the economy slowly begins to pick itself up off the floor, we’re left to wonder what effect the past twelve months of cost cutting and penny pinching is going to have on advertising spend ratios in the future.

It’s no coincidence that, over the past year, spend on internet and mobile advertising has increased by 9.4% and 18.1% respectively. In contrast, newspaper (-18.7%), television (-10.1%), radio (-11.7%) and magazine advertising (-14.8%) have all had significant declines in overall spend (see ‘Shift Happens’ video embedded below).  It is my opinion that, during the recent period of economic turmoil, many marketing managers were forced to re-evaluate their marketing budgets and the emphasis they place on traditional media spend. Marketers had to become more accountable.

Enter digital marketing.

During the downturn, marketers were drawn to the new shining star of the marketing mix – online advertising and social media marketing. It seems that many of these marketers had seen digital in action but were unsure whether or not to make the transition over to an integrated digital strategy to supplement their diminishing traditional advertising activities.  In many cases it was like trying to convince someone who only eats Big Macs to try a McChicken for the first time.

Search engine marketing providers such as Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing have seen massive growth in recent times due to their transparent, ROI based nature while Social Media Marketing is paving the way for a new frontier in branding and customer relationship management. It is a combination of relatively small costs, massive reach, active audience interaction and extreme accountability that has helped catapult digital marketing above the mainstays of the traditional marketing mix during the global financial crisis.

Being wedged in the middle of the digital marketing industry, this news is music to my ears. However, these figures and trends prompt me to ask the question: How much of the marketing mix will digital marketing be able to retain after the economy bounces back?

It will be interesting to see whether digital marketing will, on average, hold the same share of marketing budget it gained over the past 12 months, or will it be once again dominated by traditional media spend as overall marketing budgets begin to increase again. I guess the real question is, have marketing managers around the world enjoyed their taste of digital marketing or do they like their traditional flavours better?

Only time will tell…

Wrong!

But before I go into why your business should be including search optimisation as part of your marketing budget, let’s go back to the basics of exactly what marketing is.

Marketing is essentially any activity that aims to increase awareness about your brand, its products or services and reach potential customers.

What does search engine optimisation do? It aims to increase your business’ appearance in search engines, and reach more users than before, just like more traditional mediums.

To help with the thought process behind this idea, think of a search engine like you would a newspaper, magazine, or some other traditional marketing medium. The aim of placing your ad (at considerable cost) into a newspaper or magazine is to reach consumers who you wouldn’t have reached otherwise. A search engine is no different.

SEO aims to lift your site’s rankings in the search engines, exposing your business to more potential customers than before.

One major stumbling block for SEO in the past has been the reluctance of managers to spend $$$$ per month on what they considered to be web design costs. However, they are more than happy to spend thousands on print media ads that are fast losing their effectiveness.

The challenge for managers is to realise the need to treat SEO as a marketing item and not as some nuisance or web cost.

But how much should a business spend on SEO?

There are many different SEO services available, but how much you spend on SEO should be consistent with your business’ online goals and objectives.

If you currently, or would like to, achieve 40% of your sales or referrals via the online channel, then you should seriously consider spending around 40% of your marketing budget on SEO and SEM (search engine marketing).

Obviously this depends on your industry and business, but far too many businesses are not maximising their website’s earnings potential because they are not giving it a fair weighting in their marketing budgets.