Older marketing techniques 'still preferred' over social media 

Thursday, February 24 2011 by Steve Swallow

Digital marketing standards like search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) are still believed to be more effective than social media for driving sales and building brands, according to new research by Rocket.

The Digital Disciplines report discovered that only 21 per cent of responding marketers rated social media for its effectiveness at brand building and only 17 per cent could say the same for driving sales leads.

Meanwhile, search engine optimisation providers garnered 32 per cent of support, PPC got 28 per cent of thumbs up and email marketing accounted for 22 per cent. Meanwhile, when it came to driving up sales, PPC was a hit with 33 per cent of website promotion strategists, SEO got 28 per cent and email marketing won over 21 per cent as their primary mode of attack.

Nonetheless, the adoption of social networks for a number of different marketing communications still remains popular, as a whopping 94 per cent of companies are using social networks as a wider part of their managed emarketing strategy.

Pete Hendrick, the managing director of Rocket, explained: "The Digital Disciplines report suggests that, despite the increasing use of social media, many marketers still hold more faith with other longer-standing online marketing channels.

"However, with Facebook passing the 500 million user mark earlier this year and twitter announcing the launch of premium accounts, this coming year will surely only see more businesses adopt social media marketing and improve their effectiveness."

Mr Hendrick added that 2011 will still be the year when mobile marketing could become the biggest area of investment, though this "remains to be seen", even though these channels will prove integral to future success.

This week, Reevoo reported that retailers and brands that work with reviews and recommendations in managed emarketing pushes will see a sales uplift of 18 per cent.

Living Streams "Improving clients' profitability through better use of the internet".