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Digital marketing budgets will rise by 10 per cent in 2014, as per Gartner which implies a double-digit percentage increase in 2013. This conclusion was drawn from a survey which found that, on average, companies spent 10.7 per cent of their annual 2013 revenue on overall marketing activities, with digital marketing spending averaging 3.1 per cent of revenue.
"Marketing leaders are securing bigger budgets to define markets, develop offerings, and attract, acquire and retain customers," said Yvonne Genovese, managing vice president at Gartner. "Digital marketing is taking an increasing share of the marketing budget with annual digital marketing operating budgets totaling 3.1 per cent of a company's revenue in 2013, as compared with 2.6 per cent in 2012, representing a 20 per cent increase."
Eleven per cent of respondents said they spent more than half of their marketing budgets on digital activities in 2013 compared with only 3.0 per cent in 2012. Digital marketing represented an average of 28.5 per cent of the total marketing budget in 2013, as compared with 25.5 per cent in 2012.
A further survey finding was that 77 per cent of companies have a chief customer officer (CCO) or the equivalent.
"Customer experiences with a brand or organization span so many channels — both online and off — that customers have come to expect consistent experiences, no matter where an interaction initially takes place," said Laura McLellan, research vice president at Gartner. "Customer touchpoints include websites, mobile apps, social profiles, directory listings, on-site search, email interactions, communities, call center and more; hence, the increasing popularity of the role of the chief customer officer to help guide the customer right through the buying cycle and beyond."
81 per cent of organizations were also found to have a chief marketing technologist in 2013, up from 70 per cent in 2012.
When it comes to budget allocation, marketing leaders support a diverse, and increasingly complex, marketing mix. The survey found that 12.2 per cent — the biggest share of their digital marketing budget — was allocated to digital advertising in 2013, just as in 2012. However, marketers continue to wrestle with digital advertising's effectiveness. Industry associations, advertising agencies, media, technology, and metrics providers and brand advertisers are all working to address this concern by improving attribution models and cracking down on phony Web traffic.
Design, development and maintenance of the corporate website account for the second-largest share of digital marketing budgets as the increase of inbound marketing channels such as social networks, customer forums and the blogosphere creates more traffic on the corporate website. Digital commerce, social marketing and mobile marketing — three activities that increasingly overlap — are closely tied for the third-largest share of digital marketing budgets.
In 2014, marketers plan to make long overdue expenditures for mobile marketing tools and techniques.
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