Mediarun Search Marketing News

Website promotion will account for a quarter of marketing spend in 2010

February 9th 2010

Social Media Optimisation News

Businesses are putting greater emphasis on website marketing with investment predicted to increase by 17 per cent this year, according to new research.

The Marketing Budgets 2010: Effectiveness, Measurement and Allocation Report, produced by website marketing consultants Econsultancy and ExactTarget, looks in detail at how companies are allocating their offline and online marketing budget in 2010.

More than a thousand companies, mainly from the US and UK, were surveyed for the research which revealed that 28 per cent of organisations were shifting marketing budgets to digital channels from more traditional areas.

The research also found that website promotion will account for 24 per cent of overall marketing spend in 2010.

A survey by New Media Age magazine, published at the end of last year, suggested that many big name brands were not taking the opportunity to interact with their customers through social media platforms, with 74 per cent of the top 500 'superbrands' having no presence on Twitter at all.

However, this could soon be about to change, with 70 per cent of companies questioned by Econsultancy and ExactTarget saying they planned to increase spending on third party or 'off-site' social media services such as Facebook and Twitter.

With Facebook users now comprising one-nineteenth of the world's population, many organisations are beginning to realise social media is more than just a passing fad.

Subsequently, 64 per cent said they would put more money into social media efforts on their own website or intranet such as blogs and product reviews.

Meanwhile, more than 40 per cent of those surveyed said they planned to reduce investment in budgets for offline marketing channels such as direct mail, print media, television and radio.

Reporting on the research in more detail, Tim Ferguson writing for Silicon noted that search engine optimisation is another area that looks set to benefit from greater spending with 64 per cent of companies planning to increase budget for this, although just over half of respondents said they would do the same for mobile marketing.

Paid search emerged as the best approach for measuring return on investment (ROI) with 54 per cent of companies claiming they were good at estimating ROI for pay-per-click search activity.

Mobile marketing is less easy to mark, with 43 per cent of respondents rating themselves as poor at measuring ROI.

However, general budget restrictions seem to be the main obstacle for increased digital marketing investment with 40 per cent of companies blaming a lack of investment for their limited footsteps into the digital world of website promotion.