A report from Slingshot SEO found that businesses using new media marketing campaigns are undervaluing their effect on conversions.

A report from Slingshot SEO found that businesses using new media marketing channels, including organic search and social media marketing, don’t understand the true value they receive from their efforts.

The company studied analytics data to pinpoint the channels most likely to increase businesses’ conversion capability. One interesting find was that businesses are too quick to attribute direct visits that result in leads and conversions to offline marketing. Instead, Slingshot suggests these users are frequently returning to websites after initially landing on them previously from search, social media or email marketing campaigns.

According to Slingshot, marketers often overvalue their direct visit conversions by as much as 81.59 percent. Based on the studied online conversion habits, Slingshot suggests SEO campaigns are undervalued by as much as 77.25 percent. Similarly, paid search campaigns are undervalued by many businesses.

“Marketers generally give direct visit credit to branding efforts or offline advertising,” Jeremy Dearringer, Slingshot SEO founder, said in a release. “Our study suggests that online advertising vehicles such as organic search, email marketing and paid search ads lead to a large portion of those direct visits.”

Brafton recently reported that Google drives nearly half of all website traffic compared to about one-fifth stemming from direct visits. As such, SEO campaigns are crucial for companies to make their websites more visible on the web and, as Slingshot suggests, drive web conversions.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.