Digital marketers trail keyword trends, says UK marketing technology firm

Marketers agree keyword research, or identifying the potential words and phrase combinations consumers could potentially type into the search box when they go online to find products and services, is vital to the success of digital marketing campaigns.

However, a white paper Where to begin – the discovery phase, published by software-as-a-service marketing technology provider Hydra, says digital marketing teams (internal of third party), simply do not have the resources to conduct it thoroughly. Moreover, monitoring and keeping up to date with terms as they change is almost a mission impossible.

''Keyword research makes the difference between the vendor's goods and services being immediately visible to the searcher or their being swallowed up and lost in the myriad of returned search results,'' says Ruth Zohrer, solutions consultant at Hydra. ''Ultimately, the lack of thorough keyword research can prove costly as it leads to vendors failing to maximise on the online opportunity both in terms of directing potential sales leads / traffic to their site and garnering revenues from the online channel.''

In April, Hydra undertook a survey, Natural Search, Paid Search & Social Media Integration 2011 of over 300 UK-based digital marketers and focussed on how digital marketing teams currently operate, based on collaboration, use of technologies and competitor analysis.

Asked how current they feel their teams are at handling new keyword trends, less than half (42%), of digital marketers indicated they feel they are 'on trend' when it comes to keyword trends.

However, one of the greatest contrasts highlighted by the survey involved new words or expressions being used in the market. Asked whether they know which are worth spending time and money on, over half (55%) of respondents said 'no'.