Online Gains vs Traditional Media in Branding Efforts

Research Finds Marketers Increasing Spending on Mobile, Email, Search, Social Marketing

INDIANAPOLIS (Feb. 3, 2010) – 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.

Source: ExactTarget