Important Charts to Consider When Planning Your Marketing Budget in 2013

It’s October and time to start planning out your marketing plan for 2013.  In a world that is more and more mobile and social every day, we recommend for 2013 that your brand consider the following charts.

Forrester: Interactive Spending to Reach $76.6B by 2016 

Interactive spending expected to reach $76.6B in 2016, up from $34.5B in 2011.

US advertisers are expected to spend nearly $77 billion on interactive marketing by 2016 – as much as the now spend on TV – according to a new report by Forrester Research:

• By 2016, search, display, mobile, email, and social media together are expected to constitute 26% of all ad spending, up from 16% in 2011.
• The forecast anticipates declines in group-buying offers, due in large part to increased clutter in the space as ad exposures grow.
• Search will continue to dominate spending, growing from $18.8 billion in 2011 to $33.3 billion in 2016.
• Investments in display advertising, such as contextual listings, static image ads, and rich media ads (including pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll online video), are forecast to grow at a 20% CAGR and reach $27.6 billion by 2016—some 36% of interactive spending.
• Mobile ad spending is projected to surpass email and social spending, reaching $8.2 billion in 2016 at a 38% CAGR.

Customers Demanding Corporate Responsibility

Consumers worldwide are demanding a higher level of social responsibility from the companies they engage with, and most are using the power of the purse to press those demands, according to a study by Cone Communications:

• Among surveyed consumers worldwide, 81% say brands have a respon­sibility to address key social and environmental issues beyond their local communities.
• 31% say companies should change the way they operate to align with greater social and environmental needs.
• 30% say companies should support larger issues with donations and time— and use corporate muscle to advocate for change.
• 20% say companies should support larger issues with donations and time.
• Only 19% of consumers say companies should have a limited (13%) or no role (6%) in the communities they serve.

Marketing More Critical to Business Strategy in 2012

Despite continued business volatility, global executives plan to increase corpo­rate spending (albeit cautiously) in 2012—particularly the areas of IT (informa­tion technology) and marketing—according to a survey conducted by Doremus and the Financial Times:

Across most budget categories, more companies plan to increase rather than decrease spending overthe next 12 months.

• As in previous years, IT is the area most likely to record increased spending (37%), followed by advertising and marketing (29%).

• Fewer companies plan to decrease investments in IT (15%) and marketing (19%) in the coming year.

• Fully one-quarter (25%) of companies are increasing spending on R&D (research and development), while 15% are upping their spend on green investments (vs. 16% decreasing spend in that category).

Social Media for Beautiful Things: Pinterest Soars

Social networking site Pinterest is gaining popularity in the media and among brands, Experian Hitwise reports. The online pinboard allows you to “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the Web,” according to the company. That includes images of food, home décor, clothing, and furniture, which users “pin” onto their pages.

The site was recently named to Time Magazine’s Top 50 web­sites of 2011, alongside Google+, Klout, Quora, and Storify, in the social media category.

LinkedIn Audiences Highly Engaged, Active in Groups

61% of registered LinkedIn users say LinkedIn is the social site they use most for professional networking.  LinkedIn continues to dominate the executive corner of the social media uni­verse with a highly engaged member base.

• Professionals’ priorities do tend to vary by job level. For example, entry-level professionals use LinkedIn for job hunting most (24%), whereas fewer top-level (9%) and middle-management (8%) professionals do.
• Industry networking, however, appears to be a top priority for roughly 20% of LinkedIn professionals, regardless of job level.

2012 Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends

MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute surveyed 1,092 marketers in August in the second annual content marketing survey the two organizations have conducted together. Among their findings:

• Some 60% of the surveyed marketers say they plan to increase spend on content marketing over the next 12 months. On aver­age, they now spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing.

• Just as the previous year, 9 out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing to grow their businesses, relying on eight content marketing tactics, on average, to achieve their market­ing goals.

• The most popular tactics are article-posting (79% of respon­dents), social media (excluding blogs) (74%), blogs (65%), e-newsletters (63%), case studies (58%), and in-person events (56%).

Search and Email Still Rule the Web

Since 2002, search and email have been the most popular online activities in the US and remain so today, according to a report by Pew Research:

• 61% of online males use search daily.

• 60% of online whites use search daily, compared with 57% of African Americans and 48% of Hispanics.

• 66% of online adults age 18-29 search daily, compared with 64% of those age 30-49, 52% of those age 50-64, and 37% of those age 65+.

• 75% of online adults with a college degree search online daily, compared with 66% of those with some college education, 41% of high school grads, and 29% with some high school education.

Marketers to Integrate Social Media and Email in 2012

More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social media with their email marketing efforts in 2012, and 44% plan to integrate mobile with email, according to a survey from Strong Mail:

• Email marketing (60%) and social media (55%) are cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend in 2012, followed by mobile (37%) and search (37%).

• Only 18% of business leaders plan to increase spending on direct mail and tradeshows in the coming year.

• A total 64% cite customer loyalty and retention as the primary benefit of email marketing, followed by awareness building (51%), driving revenue (44%), new customer acquisition (38%), and lead generation (B2B) (29%).

Web Traffic via Mobile Up 102%

Some 12.6% of total website traffic was generated via mobile device in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 102% from the 6.3% recorded a year earlier, according to the Walker Sands Quarterly Web Traffic Report:

• The top smartphone operating system used during the fourth quarter of 2011 was Google’s Android, accounting for nearly one-half of all mobile traffic to websites.

• The reported 4Q11 levels were 3.3 percentage points higher (up 22%) than the 10.3% reported in the previous quarter.

• The site with the smallest percentage of mobile activity re­corded 4.7% of total Web traffic arriving via mobile in 4Q11.

• The site with the biggest percentage of mobile activity recorded 24.9% of all traffic arriving via mobile during the quarter.

Small Businesses to Ramp Up Social, Mobile Marketing in 2012

Smartphone penetration has reached an impressive 80% in the small-business community, and interest in mobile marketing is mounting, along with the use of social media, according to a report by Ad-ology Research:

• 21.8% of small-business decision-makers say they plan to dedicate more resources to mobile marketing in 2012, up from the 12.6% who said so a year earlier.

• Facebook is ranked as the social media site most beneficial: 86.8% of small-business decision-makers use the social networking site for marketing, and 77.3% say their efforts there are very or somewhat beneficial for business.

• Twitter penetration has reached 71.4% in the small business community, and 56.0% say Twitter marketing is very or somewhat beneficial.

• Google+ penetration (64.3%) is already rivaling LinkedIn (66.9%) in the small business community; 53.2% of small-business deci­sion-makers say their efforts with Google+ are very or somewhat beneficial, while 51.2% say the same about LinkedIn.