Marketing Budgets continue to shift to Digital

Marketing dynamics have changed dramatically in the last few years with more people spending time online researching, watching videos, playing games and interacting via social media channels.  In order to not avoid potential and current customers, marketers must learn how to be social (actually communicate) in the digital channel. 

Econsultancy and ExactTarget released a new report recently that states digital marketing will account for 24% of overall marketing spend this year, and 28% of firms are shifting at least some of their overall marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels.

The research was based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies around the world, though the majority were based in the US (45%) or UK (33%). Some key findings include:
 
* Just under half (46%) of companies say they are planning to increase their overall marketing budget, and a further 42% say they are planning to keep this budget the same as it was in 2009. Only 13% say they are planning to decrease overall marketing budget.


* 64% plan to increase budgets for search engine optimization, and 51% plan to increase budgets for paid search marketing.

* 70% are planning to increase their budgets for off-site social media such as Facebook and Twitter, despite admitting to being “poor” at measuring social media ROI.

* Budget shifts will hurt traditional media spending. Just 17% say they are increasing their print media budgets, compared to 41% who are decreasing spending.

           The most revealing question on the

                                        Digital Shift

What extent company’s marketing and advertising rely on traditional (offline) media versus digital marketing?

          7% Very much focused on Traditional Media & Marketing
        30%  Manly Traditional, some Digital
        22% Equal focus on Traditional & Digital
        25% Many Digital, some Traditional
        16% Very much focused on Digital

According to company respondents, the biggest barrier to digital marketing investment is restricted budget for all types of marketing, cited as a factor by 40% of company respondents. But according to agency respondents, lack of understanding about digital is the biggest impediment. Just under half of supply-side respondents cite this as the biggest problem.

Again, it all depends on your products or services.  I will repeat this forever, there is No one marketing solution for all industries or even businesses in within the same industry.  Don't get me wrong, Digital is great - you can track, interact in real time, meet people you may never had the opportunity to meet and the list goes on, BUT, there are also good reasons to use traditional marketing tools.