According to a study by Web CMO, guess what the most effective advertising strategy was for Web marketers?

Banner ads?
Print ads?
Spam mail?

Sorry, none of the above! The single most effective method of generating Web site traffic are Search Engines followed closely by Solicited or Opt-In Email.

The following scale demonstrates how each Web marketer in the Web CMO survey rated the over-all effectiveness of the following methods on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most effective.

Search Engines 3.35
Solicited or Opt-In Email 3.34
Offline Advertising 3.04
Press Release 3-S
Banner Advertising 2.85
Discussion Forums 2.83
Sponsorships 2.61
Newsgroups 2.46
Strategic Linking 2.44
Spam 1.83

However, those Webmasters that found the search engines effective must have known the secret: People must be able to find you on one or more keywords when they do a search!

The Web CMO study is just one of many affirming the effectiveness of search engine marketing. NPD Group found that search engine listings create six times more sales per visitor on average than banner ads!