Radio, TV, print budgets slashed as marketers look online to build brand reputation

Monday, 08 February 2010 00:17

Increasing investment in social media, mobile marketing, email marketing and search will fuel a 17 percent surge in digital marketing spending this year, as marketers migrate budgets from television, print and radio.

Featured in Marketing Budgets 2010: Effectiveness, Measurement and Allocation, new joint research conducted by Econsultancy and global digital marketing provider ExactTarget, the survey of more than 1,000 marketers found two out of three increasing their digital marketing budget in 2010, earning digital channels nearly a quarter of marketers’ total budgets.

“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,” said 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 percent of responding companies are increasing their budgets for off-site social media marketing on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly 65 percent of companies are planning to increase their budget for on-site social media such as blogs or ratings and reviews.

“The research shows a healthy outlook for the digital marketing industry with the majority of responding 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 email marketing will remain buoyant.”

Key findings of the research include:

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 one-fifth can effectively measure ROI.

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 email 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.

Marketers can download a summary of the More Money, More Channels: Marketing Budgets For 2010 report free of charge here. The entire report is available for purchase from Econsultancy online.

The release of the joint research follows Forrester Research naming ExactTarget a “leader” in email marketing and awarding the company a perfect 5 of 5 in the Customer Category of “The Forrester WaveTM: Email Marketing Service Providers Q4 2009” (December 2009) report. The independent research firm found ExactTarget to be the only email service provider to score a perfect score in the Customers Category, noting “with high satisfaction scores and online community, ExactTarget can successfully meet marketers’ complex business needs.” To download the report, visit www.ExactTarget.com/Wave09.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and one-to-one marketing solutions. The company’s software as a service technology provides organizations a single platform to connect with customers via triggered and transactional email, integrated text messaging, voice messaging, landing pages and social media. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget’s software powers permission-based multi-channel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Aurora Fashions, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com or call 1-866-EMAILET.

ExactTarget Mitch Frazier, 317-275-5034  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or Dittoe PR for ExactTarget Lauren Sanders, 317-202-2280 X10  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it