Aug 4, 2008 6:03 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Brian Quinton

Almost half the brands that spend money and resources on search marketing fail to connect those campaigns to their offline marketing efforts, according to research made public today by search marketing firm iProspect.

The study, produced with JupiterResearch, found that only 55% of companies conducting search engine marketing (SEM) report integrating those campaigns with at least one offline marketing channel. Those that do coordinate with marketing in another medium are most likely to integrate SEM with direct mail (34%) or with magazine or newspaper advertising (29%). Only 12% of respondents reported coordinating SEM campaigns with either television or radio marketing.

That goes against earlier iProspect findings about how users are led to search, the report says. An August 2007 study found that more than two-thirds of users (67%) perform online searches because of something they’ve seen in an offline channel.

That earlier report found that TV spots are the leading offline driver of searches, accounting for 37% of online searches for a product or brand. Word of mouth was the second most prominent search inducement (36%), with magazine or newspaper ads trailing third (30%).

Despite such a clear demonstration of the power of integrating search and offline channels, the strategy has yet to gain widespread adoption,” iProspect president Robert Murray said in a statement. “By failing to integrate their efforts with offline, search marketers are essentially ignoring the very channels that drive users to search.”

Asked to explain the lack of integration between their SEM and their offline campaigns, survey respondents most often pointed to lack of budget to enable coordinated online/ offline efforts (19%), scarce human resources (15%), or simply a failure to consider integration (13%). Other reasons given for not linking search to offline marketing including a lack of support from senior management (11%) and separate divisions managing the search and offline channels (11%).

“There’s no question about the combined power of search and offline channels,” said John Tawadros, iProspect COO, in a statement. “To truly push integration forward and fully reap its benefits, it is incumbent upon the CMO to break down the silos…and create a culture that rewards integrated efforts.”

Other findings from the report released today include the following:

· The offline integration tactics most often used by search marketers are including the company Web address (84%) and the company name (66%) in offline marketing.

· Only 26% of marketers make sure to use the same keywords in their offline marketing that they use in their SEM campaigns.

· Interestingly, nearly one-quarter of all search marketer respondents to the iProspect survey reported doing no offline marketing at all.

Fifty-eight percent of marketers said they give priority to optimizing photos or images among their online assets, making sure those are found in any search. Thirty-two percent said they give priority to optimizing press releases and 20% to video.

Those priorities run counter to an April 2008 iProspect study of “blended” search on Google, Yahoo and MSN, said Murray. That earlier report found that because the major search engines now serve up a mix of assets on their results pages—not the text-heavy Web pages they used to favor—users are most likely to click through on listings that look like news of press releases (36%), followed by image results (31%0 and then video (17%).

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