Content Marketing The Most Popular Digital Area Slated For A Budget Hike This Year

February 7, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Data-driven | Digital | Email | Mobile Phone | Paid Search | Search Engine Optimization | Social Media

Econsultancy-Digital-Marketing-Budget-Plans-in-2013-Feb2013Add it to the list of research (such as this and this) heralding the increasing priority of content marketing. This latest piece of research, from Econsultancy and Responsys [download page], finds that 70% of company marketers – who hail mostly from the UK (46%) and other European countries (19%) – plan to increase their content marketing budgets this year, while another 29% will keep them at current levels. Content marketing edges SEO (65%) and email marketing for engagement/retention (also 65%) as the most popular digital channel tabbed for a budget increase.

Other digital channels and disciplines to get a budget hike this year include social media investment (for engagement/retention – 62%), mobile marketing (for acquisition – 61%), and social media investment (for acquisition – 61%). In fact, across the 15 digital marketing channels and disciplines identified, a majority of respondents intend to increase their budgets in 12. The only areas not to see a majority are online display advertising (for acquisition – 49% increasing; for engagement/retention – 43% increasing) and affiliate marketing (49% increasing).

That all makes sense given separate results from the same survey indicating that 71% of company marketers plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year.

Interestingly, though, marketers appear to be putting money into channels and disciplines they’re not entirely confident about in terms of measuring ROI. Elsewhere in the Econsultancy report, only 26% of company respondents said their ability to measure ROI from content marketing is “good.” Just 17% could say the same about their social media investments. By comparison, 33% feel good about their ability to measure ROI from affiliate marketing, and 32% feel the same about display advertising. Perhaps marketers are better able to measure ROI from those channels, and are just not too happy with the results?

About the Data: he Econsultancy / Responsys Marketing Budgets 2013 report is based on a survey of more than 800 client-side marketers and agency respondents. Information about the online survey was emailed to Econsultancy’s user base of internet professionals and marketers, and promoted online via Twitter and other channels during December 2012 and January 2013.

A total of 834 respondents took part in the survey, including 457 client-side marketing professionals and 377 supply-side respondents (including agency marketers and those working for technology vendors or other service providers).

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