A new survey by Conductor validates the importance of SEO during the downturn. The survey, by Conductor, had 317 respondents drawn from a range of industries including B2B (24%), Retail (12%), Healthcare (11%), Media (10%) and others (travel and hospitality, consumer technology, financial services, insurance, automotive, e-commerce, and manufacturing).
Like the most other marketer surveys right now, the Conductor study shows that budgets are being adversely impacted by the outbreak. However, most of these survey respondents that their budgets were remaining the same or decreased very slightly. Among all those companies, only 20 % reported a decrease in their budgets.
Despite this, the survey also denotes that almost 68% of companies’ goals are the same (32%) or has an increment of about 36%. At the same time, 86% reported that their business goals would be tough to achieve this year because of reduced budgets and other circumstances.
When the Conductor surveyed their preferred online channels asking, “Will SEO will be more or less important during this time?” Around 63% said SEO would gain in importance slightly (34%) or steeply (29%). There were only 5% of businesses who said SEO would see a decrease in its significance.
As the above images show organic search is the top channel followed by paid search and email. While social media was named by only 18% as the top-performing channel. These perceptions will drive future marketing decisions in a downturn.
Confronted with a global recession, these marketers say they would, lower budgets, invest more in SEO and only this will help them on raising their ROI threshold for marketing decisions. Only a minority (25%) talked about layoffs.
Conclusion
This survey indicates that organic search is the best performing digital channel. Most of the businesses also suggest that SEO is the only essential tact that can help to create a long-term impact. Investing in SEO services India now will help the business to pay significant dividends when the crisis is over.
