It can be difficult to determine what percentage of your company’s marketing budget should go to each marketing initiative. As priorities are constantly changing, your company needs to connect with current trends. It can help to see where major companies are spending their budgets; here is some information on how top marketing departments around the country are allocating their funds.
The three main areas where over 60 percent of marketers planned to increase their budgets are the company website, email marketing, and social media marketing. The email marketing Benchmark Report survey found that 69 percent of marketers planned to increase their website budget, 64 percent planned to increase email marketing, and 63 percent planned to increase marketing in social media. Marketers focused on these areas because they can track customer trends with their website, create personalized connections through email marketing, and make social media marketing more effective.
While they take the second seat to the major marketing budget allocations, a few other areas are still top priorities to companies. These include SEO marketing, such as Google AdWords and paid search; online display ads; and mobile marketing. The numbers for these areas are 58 percent increasing the SEO budget, 51 percent increasing the online display ad budget, and 48 percent increasing the mobile marketing budget. While you might expect more marketers to be focusing on their mobile marketing budget, some companies are not yet on board with that growing trend. However, many companies see their mobile marketing bringing a significant number of people into their websites, making it a smart choice for focusing budgets.
As you could imagine, few marketers planned to increase their budgets in non-digital areas. The areas marketers are moving away from include product placement, print ads, and teleprospecting. Nonetheless, some find ways to integrate the non-digital marketing methods with digital ones. For instance, some companies have connected their teleprospecting with their email marketing to give each customer the best experience.
Forbes explains that the type of marketing that is the most effective for companies is Digital Marketing customized to each customer to help them with their needs. When marketing focuses only on competing with other companies but does not give the customers a positive experience, it is not working. Companies need to follow data and understand why and how they should focus on certain methods of marketing. For example, it will not help to simply spend your budget on mobile marketing; you also need to understand how to connect with the customer.
Overall, companies are not focusing on one area for digital marketing, but are putting their budgets into different approaches and integrating them to most effectively connect with customers. Follow these trends and your company may see positive results from your marketing initiatives.