British marketing strategy is still confident in the powers of SEO and social media, the UK Search Engine Marketing Survey has revealed.




Research collected during February and March 2012 by Econsultancy and Guava  has shown that digital marketing budgets are continuing to defy the global economic outlook by increasing in the coming months.

Over 500 UK in-house marketers and agency staff were surveyed.

In Social Media: 62% of companies expect their budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with 9% expecting their social media spend to more than double.

In Search Optimisation: 57% will increase spending on SEO; 49% will increase spending on paid search.

On Mobile: In 2011, only 2% (company) and 5% (agency paid) search budgets were allocated to mobile; in 2012, these figures rose to 4% and 9%. With over half of UK mobiles now smartphones, this shift in strategy is inevitable for digital marketers.

Whilst the necessity for good social media and healthy SEO (particularly with Google's Penguin update) has never been more relevant to business marketing, the game is perhaps becoming more convoluted.

In SEO alone, the number of companies reporting a "lack of know-how" as a barrier to success has risen from 16% to 29% in one year. Whilst Google's update will take some of the flak, it is prudent for businesses to understand what they are spending their money on - increased budgets are all well and good, as marketers are reading the trends accurately - but spending the money in the right way (whilst so far miraculously unharmed by the economic turmoil) is of utmost importance.