Why is UK web marketing growing so fast?

UK web marketing spend up 40%

UK internet marketing spend grew by over 40% in the first half of 2007 and achieved a 15% share of all advertising spend according to the UK Internet Advertising Bureau. They forecast that UK web marketing spend in 2007 would be £2.8 billion ($5.6 billion).

Paid for search (Pay per Click) accounted for 57% of internet advertising and was up 44% over the previous year.

The UK internet advertising market is the largest in Europe (39% share) and the UK ad spend per web user averages £56 ($112) compared with the European average  of £26 ($52) & the US figure of £40 ($80).

UK media agency ZenithOptimedia forecast that by 2010, internet  advertising in the UK, Denmark, Norway & Sweden will exceed a 20% share of advertising spend. 

So why is web marketing growing so fast?

Bigger brands are under more pressure to account for the return on their marketing investment. In many cases. conventional advertising fails to show an adequate return or it is often too complex to measure sufficiently robustly.

This is partly due to media fragmentation and there are now hundreds of TV channels, radio stations, press, magazines, outdoor posters etc to reach your audience. It's harder to reach a mass audience but arguably easier to reach niches.

Consumers are more savvy than ever at decoding advertising. They are also bombarded with thousands of messages every day and as a result, tune out of virtually all of them. How many ads can you recall seeing or hearing today? I often ask this question at my web marketing seminars and generally only 1 person can recall only 1 or 2 ads.

So most advertising fails to score. If you are not looking to buy a new mini you will largely not notice their advertising. When you are looking to buy a new Mini, suddenly you notice Mini's everywhere and you are also more likely to notice a Mini ad campaign.

The old way of trying to reach masses of people is largely broken and too expensive for all but the biggest brands. Demonstrating a marketing return on investment is far from easy but I have done this on projects with Asda, Egg, AA & ITV.

The new web marketing model enables target customers to find you rather than you trying to find them. Pay per click advertising does this brilliantly. If I am looking to buy a new TV or find an accountant, I sit down on my Mac and see what comes up on Google Search. Bigger brands are seeing this and switching funds from traditional media to web marketing.

Small and medium size companies using Pay Per Click advertising can compete on a level playing field alongside a big corporate. This wasn't possible in the old world as the production and media cost was often a barrier to entry. So lots of smaller businesses are getting into web marketing too.

I love it that a small business in my village can compete globally against big corporates 24 * 7 and the consumer wins.

Web marketing tips that any business (large or small) could apply to attract and retain new customers

• Do you have web marketing strategies in place to attract high numbers of targeted prospects?
  
• Is your Search Engine Optimisation strategy delivering good results against your target key words?
• Have you invested sufficiently in Pay Per Click advertising? The UK average is around 9% of advertising spend. However, as small and medium sized businesses are unlikely to be using more expensive media like TV, then their investment in web marketing should be much higher.
• Is your web marketing working?
• Have you got a programme in place to measure web performance against key business metrics? 
• Do you have the skills in house to do this?

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing specialist with Brand New Way, a UK web marketing agency (based in Wiltshire & Bristol) which helps companies to attract and keep valuable customers online.