Business-to-business marketers will be allocating greater chunks of their budgets to digital spending this year.
The article featured on AdAge reveals the results from Advertising Age’s 2014 BtoB Outlook: Priorities and Plans survey, according to which, digital spending will see the biggest boost in 2014, as 79.9% of b-to-b marketers plan to increase that spending.
The increase will result in more budgets going digital with 38.7% of b-to-b marketers claiming to intend on spending 30.0% or more of their marketing budgets on digital, which is a 30.0% increase from last year.
Most marketers reveal plans to invest more resources and energy on content and mobile marketing this year.
Further, 47% of the respondents say they will focus on mobile platform advertising, with 61.3% not using mobile marketing strategies at the moment. Nearly half of those who are already using mobile marketing say their focus is on apps (47.3%).
As far as overall marketing budget is concerned, 52.5% of b-to-b marketers plan on increasing their total marketing budgets in 2014, up from 48.7% in 2013. Only 36.4% of marketers plan on increasing their marketing budgets by more than 10%. 63.2% do not plan to increase the number of employees in 2014, while only 31.6% plan on hiring new staff.
Content marketing is one of the 2014 forerunners, with 75.1% of the respondents revealing plans to increase content marketing this year.
Further, 10% of b-to-b marketers claim that they will spend over 25% of their 2014 budget on digital platforms.
Four out of five respondents plan on increasing digital spending this year, which is a 13% increase from last year. Spending on traditional media such as print, outdoor, radio and TV will remain flat. Direct mail spending will also remain flat and only 7.2% more respondents plan on increasing spending on events.
“We will probably hold steady or reduce some traditional media. We always use TV; our television is focused on financial cable around the world. Airports we will continue to use, regardless of the circumstances – it’s the place we keep our face the most fresh and it indexes so well against our customers. We will increase our digital presence in all the things we do. We will also spend more on recruiting marketing talent next year,” said Kathy Button Bell, VP-CMO Emerson Electric Co.
Content marketing will also be focused on webcasts and webinars, with a 9.4% increase in the number of respondents who plan on increasing their budgets for such events. Mobile, sponsorships, video and banners will also see increases this year.
“Customers increasingly conduct research using mobile devices and tablets. We need to adapt our content-delivery strategy to this changing behaviour. We will begin to do this in two main ways. First, we will ensure mobile friendliness of our content through responsive design of our content platforms. Secondly, we will make our streaming content available on the third-party apps and readers our customers use every day on their mobile devices,” said Rishi Dave, Executive Director, Business Digital Marketing, Dell.