To dispel myths, cure misperceptions and test marketers’ knowledge, HRmarketer developed the following list of Top 5 Marketer Misperceptions about the HR and benefits marketplace. Enoy :-)
1. PR is dead.
Overall PR spending in the human capital marketplace increased in 2006. In fact, spending increased in 74% of all firms (based on a 2006 HRmarketer.com survey sent to thousands of HR and employee benefit marketing professionals). And 68% of the survey respondents reported being satisfied or extremely satisfied with their PR firm with 38% of the firms having a full-time PR firm on retainer. I can't tell you how many blogs we've seen recently that say PR is dead. Saying PR is dead is like saying advertising is dead just because print newspaper readership is down. The fact is, PR is one of the most effective lead generating tactics a marketing department can engage in - but the rules have changed. The resurgence of PR is further evidenced by the growth of Marketing PR.
2. Marketing’s Primary Objective is Creating Buzz and Media Visibility
Most HR and employee benefit marketing executives rate lead generation as their primary marketing objective over creating buzz and media placements. However, while this seems obvious, research by HRmarketer revealed that 44% of these marketing executives still consider media placements as a key metric on how effective their marketing is.
3. Direct Marketing is the Most Cost-Effective Way to Drive Leads
The truth is an integrated, custom approach works best. In fact, the telephone leads all media with the highest response rate with 5.53 percent and Marketing PR leads all marketing activities with the highest qualified response rate. For the response rates for all types of marketing mediums including dimensional mail, direct mail, catalogs, etc. take the HR marketing IQ Quiz and test your marketing knowledge.
4. HR is a Niche Industry.
The HR software market alone is sized to be over $3 billion. Imagine what the size of the employee benefits marketplace is? There are over 600 national media outlets and more than 300 print HR publications that focus exclusively on the human capital marketplace. If you include Blogs, this jumps to over 1,000. Few other industries can claim this.
5. Pay Per Click (PPC) Placements are More Effective than Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
According to leading web analytics firms, pay-per-click advertisers can expect to receive between 3% and 7% conversions. Conversion rate is NOT necessarily a qualified lead. A conversion rate is defined as “the relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a ‘conversion’, such as a sale or request to receive more information”. A recent study by WebSideStory showed the following conversion stats for these major search engines:
- AOL traffic 6.17%
- MSN traffic 6.03%
- Yahoo traffic 4.07%
- Google traffic 3.83%
Search optimization (SEO) is far less expensive than an aggressive paid search campaign and gets you the same amount of traffic. Plus, the effects are longer lasting, and conversions are frequently in the same range (or even higher) than paid ads on engines.
To learn more interesting facts about our unique industry, take the HR Marketing IQ Quiz