Most marketers know that the best way to make profit is to have a multi-pronged approach, which will help ensure you get your message in front of as many people as possible. When it comes to choosing which of the many digital channels are the most effective, however, it seems that most marketers are pretty much clueless.
A new study was released by Web Marketing 123, where they asked over 600 marketers what the most profitable channel is. The following are the results:
- Unknown – 33%
- Email – 26%
- SEO – 17%
- Paid Search – 15%
- Social Media – 5%
- Display Ads – 5%
So, of all the options, the highest ranking was ‘I don’t know.’ Marketers are supposed to be experts at gathering and interpreting data, but it seems even we cannot figure out where the best place to invest marketing dollars is going to be. Even beyond the top 33% of people, the results are surprisingly spread out between Email, SEO and paid search.
Of course, part of the reason the people who actually claimed to know would be different is because different approaches are going to be more effective for promoting different products or brands. This still doesn’t answer how a full third of respondents could be so confused that they wouldn’t even venture a guess.
Take a minute to think about all the places you invest your marketing time and dollars. Which one have you found is the most effective? Do you even know? Maybe now is a good time to dig into the data and see where you should be focusing your efforts.
You can see the full survey HERE.
