Digital marketing spending will increase 17% in 2010 as marketers move dollars away from TV, print and radio advertising to social media, mobile, search and e-mail marketing, a new report from a leading e-mail service provider and prominent Internet marketing and e-commerce consulting firm Econsultancy finds.
Two out of three of the 1,000 marketers surveyed say they plan to increase their digital marketing budget in 2010, earning digital channels nearly a quarter of marketers’ total spend, the survey finds.
“The shift from offline to online is in full swing as marketers look to measure direct increases in top-line sales, site traffic and improve overall marketing return on investment,” says Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy and co-author of the report. “Interestingly, brand reputation is becoming a more significant driver of the migration to digital marketing, particularly when it comes to social media.”
Social media is the fastest-growing digital marketing channel, according to the survey. More than 70% of responding companies are increasing their budgets for social media marketing on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly 65% of companies are planning to increase their budgets for social media on their own sites through features such as blogs or ratings and reviews.
“The research shows a healthy outlook for the digital marketing industry with the majority of companies increasing their budgets for most digital channels,” said Linus Gregoriadis, research director at Econsultancy. “Social media marketing is the area where companies are most likely to be spending more money during 2010, but areas such as search engine marketing and e-mail marketing will remain buoyant.” The survey also finds:
- 28% of marketers are shifting marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels.
- Two-thirds of marketers are planning to increase investments in social media even though less than 20% say they can effectively measure their return on that spending.
- 64% of companies plan to increase budgets in search-engine optimization.
- 56% plan to increase budgets for mobile marketing.
- 54% plan to increase budgets for e-mail marketing.
- 51% plan to increase budgets for paid search.
- 42% of marketers plan to keep budgets the same as 2009 and 13% plan to decrease their overall marketing budget.
- 41% of marketers plan to decrease spending on print and radio marketing in 2010.
Source: www.internetretailer.com
Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010