2011 was a very busy year for online marketers- Social networks have increased their popularity and significance while the search engines industry also changed drastically (mostly thanks to the Panda algorithm of Google). Now it is the time to check how it will affect marketers in 2012.

A recent survey by BrightEdge has examined what are the expectations and intentions of marketers in 2012. 360 marketers from many industries (such as retail, technology, financial) have participated in the survey, providing a glimpse for their yearly marketing efforts. Here are the survey’s main findings:

More On Search Marketing
Almost three quarters of the respondents (72%) intends to spend more on search marketing in 2012, reflecting the importance and the challenges search engines constitutes. 26% intends to keep the search marketing budget as it was in 2011 and only 2% intending to spend less on search marketing.

Social Media Unequivocal Importance
The respondents have demonstrated an incredible recognition of the social media in their marketing strategy- 98% have answered that the social media matters to their organization’s overall marketing strategy, while only 2% don’t (the same 2% as before?).

Social Signals Will Be More Important To SEO
According to the respondents, social signals will take a much more significant part in SEO- 84% answered that social signals will be more important (53%) or much more important (31%) for their SEO in 2012. 16% believes it will stay the same while no one (!) has answered that social signals will be less important for their SEO.

Conclusion

The marketers that participated in this survey have expressed their great confident in both search and the social media channels separately and also combined as they would integrate together furthermore in 2012- Social signals such as Like, Tweet or +1 will become more influential on SEO.

You can watch this video of BrightEdge’s CEO talking about the survey and its results: