Some products and services virtually sell themselves; others require a lot more work. Now, an Australian SEO company has identified which industries require the highest marketing spend to generate sales.
Competition when marketing online has never been fiercer, according to SEO Shark, yet some seem to market their products and services effortlessly, while others struggle with the task and seem to spend big dollars in the process.
Aside from marketing strategy, SEO Shark has found the difference may simply be the type of industry or item that is being marketed.
The company looked into the average cost of a paid advertisement to appear at the top of list on Google, in conjunction with relevant keywords used by 21 different business categories.
Most expensive, somewhat surprisingly, were IT services. Despite having a relatively low average of 7,780 searches per month, popular search terms including “IT support” and “managed IT services” attracted a price tag of $107.60.
Next highest on the list were insurance products. With a much higher volume of monthly searches (389,920), it attracted an ad spend of $88.15 for search terms like “compare car insurance” and “health insurance”.
Legal services ranked a close third, with search terms such as “estate lawyers” and “Sydney criminal lawyer” costing $84.90, across monthly search volumes of 45,080.
Another surprise was the cheapest business category: retail.
Retailers can pay as little as $1.90 for search terms like “online shopping” and “clothes online”.
The full list can be found below.
“High search volumes don’t guarantee a lower top-of-page bid. At the end of the day, it’s all to do with return on investment on any particular keyword,” explained SEO Shark’s managing director and senior SEO strategist, Lucas Bikowski.
“For example, an IT company that is bidding on the keyphrase ‘managed IT services’ knows that an IT service contract will last for about a year or so. If you compare this to someone searching for ‘travel insurance’, which people often purchase at a one-off basis, you can begin to understand why there is a fluctuation in the numbers and why some industries are harder to market.”
Mr Bikowski added that businesses can use the cost of search terms as an indicator for the degree of difficulty for marketing a product or service online.
“Many businesses are investing in creating a website that ticks all the SEO boxes, including keyword strategy, to make sure their site appears at the top of a user’s search page,” he said.
Average top page ad spend/search volumes for Australian industries
- IT – $107.60; 7,780 searches
- Insurance – $88.15; 389,920 searches
- Legal – $84.90; 45,080 searches
- Marketing – $66.90; 20,070 searches
- Real estate – $63.80; 26,140 searches
- Trades – $50.90; 68,290 searches
- Wellness and allied health – $40.75; 274,180 searches
- Home loans – $34.60; 59,110 searches
- Telecommunications – $29.15; 120,610 searches
- Accounting and advisory – $27.70; 36,520 searches
- Education – $21.50; 68,140 searches
- Fashion – $17.90; 382,270 searches
- Food and dining – $17.50; 1,241,870 searches
- Beauty – $16.50; 307,710 searches
- Aged care – $15.30; 33,250 searches
- Recruitment – $12.90; 19,830 searches
- Travel – $11.75; 1,053,400 searches
- Medical centre – $9.45; 120,540 searches
- Gifts and flowers – $8.00; 190,350 searches
- Fitness – $7.45; 128,390 searches
- Retail – $1.90; 54,180 searches
Source: SEO Shark
