Marketing Focus For 2010: More Marketing Dollars Focused On Internet Marketing

digital advertising Traditional Advertising Takes a Hit

Traditional advertising is yet again the victim in a down economy. More businesses today are focusing more of their marketing spend on internet-based marketing versus traditional marketing strategies. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business conducted a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) survey, published in August of 2009, on Fortune 1000 CMOs and how they are going to allocate their upcoming marketing budgets for 2010. The study found that CMOs are decreasing their traditional advertising (print, radio, TV) spend by 7.9% while increasing their overall Internet marketing (online advertising, social media, search engine optimization) spend by 9.5%.

The Marketing Consulting Comeback

Another notable finding in this study centered on the trend that CMOs are looking to increase spend on marketing consulting services. It was noted that the previous year, CMOs reduced their overall marketing consulting spend by 4.5% for cost cutting measures. In 2010, the future for marketing consultants is much brighter. For the next 15 months, CMOs are no longer looking to decrease their marketing consulting spend but rather increase by 1.3%. CMOs are looking to gain knowledge centered on knowledge development, market research, intelligence, and integration.

The Social Media Surge

The CMO survey also recognized that social media currently comprises of about 3.5% of the total marketing spend but forecasts that CMOs will increase their spend in social media by 6.1% in the next 12 months. This tells us that CMOs are seeing the benefit of social media campaigns and are able to start calculating the return on investment for these strategies. The study forecasts that spending on social media strategies will increase by 300% in the next 5 years making social media the marketing growth strategy for most marketers.

And The Winner Is

Internet marketing is getting a lot of attention by Fortune 1000 marketing executives and they are realigning their marketing budgets to target internet-centric marketing strategies. Based on the CMO survey, it appears that Internet marketing is becoming the fastest growing marketing strategy in the CMO’s tool kit.

Source: http://www.cmosurvey.org