Although the benefits of corporate blogs frequently make news in the business and mainstream media, survey respondents hadn’t yet embraced the technology — a slim 7% said their company operated a corporate blog. Furthermore, only 18% were considering starting a blog this year.
When it comes to marketing products or services online, just 28% of the total respondents said they used affiliate networks. Consumer merchants had a stronger affinity for affiliate marketing than their business counterparts. Thirty-five percent of b-to-c respondents used affiliate marketing, whereas only 21% of b-to-b merchants did.
Respondents using affiliate networks did try to control what affiliates were up to. Nearly half (49%) said they explicitly prohibited affiliates from placing bids on their corporate name or trademarks as search terms.
Large companies are more apt to have dedicated SEM staff
| Less than $10 million | $10 million or more | |
|---|---|---|
| Yes, we have a dedicated SEM staff | 21% | 34% |
| No, we don’t have a dedicated SEM staff | 79% | 66% |
Where merchants run pay-per-click ad campaigns
Google and/or Yahoo! Search results pages 75%
Other general search engines as well on Google and/or Yahoo! 47%
On shopping or price-comparison engines 32%
On vertical or industry-specific search engines 23%
On Web distribution networks run by the general search engines 19%
On local search engines 7%
Those optimizing Web pages for search inhouse 45%
