Online Marketing Growing in Europe

Although cost-cutting measures are running rampant right now, European marketers seem determined to make the Internet work for them.  New numbers via eMarketer and the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) show that online advertising spend in Europe looks to grow by double-digits in each of the next three years. 

With 178 million Europeans online each week, there is no shortage of users to reach.  Overall, European marketers seem to be diverting traditional advertising budgets to the online arena, to make the most out of what they have.

Growth of Search Marketing
According to the poll, 64% of respondents say they’ll be using more search in 2009, with growth in e-mail marketing and display advertising as well.  The expected growth doesn’t distinguishing between paid and organic search, but you can reasonably expect that both will grow.

Right now, paid search in Europe generally has lower cost per clicks (especially in engines other than Google), as the market has not fully been tapped.  If it gains in popularity, you can expect to see some rises in CPCs depending on your market.  When doing paid search across a variety of European regions and languages, be sure that you campaigns are well organized and that keywords and campaign structure are localized to particular areas. Landing pages are equally important; they’ll need to be localized and optimized for the campaigns and keywords as much as possible.

Organic search growth in Europe is equally as tantalizing, as it has not been as fast to take off as it has been in the US (or even the UK).  With many companies cutting back on their budgets, many are letting their SEO work fall by the wayside, not realizing that building a solid presence in the search engines now could give them a big leg up on the competition now and in the future.