To Increase Or Decrease Your Digital Marketing Investment?

As the popularity of digital marketing has increased, business owners are often asked by their marketing agencies to deal with the issue of budget allotment. In many cases, with a company owner who has previously marketed their business almost entirely with traditional media, many questions are raised regarding the proper budget required to take advantage of the?possible reach and variety digital marketing can offer.

Many business owners look to ?free? or low cost ways to dip their toes into the digital arena. Channels like social media, or blogging are often low cost entries into online marketing. But unfortunately, a lack of understanding can often cause unrealistic expectations when it comes to results and how to measure the impact of a digital strategy.

As the digital channels and opportunities like PPC, SEO, and various Applications?continue to expand and change the marketing landscape, business owners who are seeking ways to increase their company?s digital marketing outlets need to consider whether to increase, or if already maximizing digital, decrease or reallocate their digital marketing investment.

A recent study by Marketing Matters Inbound and Ascend2 asked business owners about their digital marketing budget allocation and found that 58% of B2B organizations will continue to increase their digital budget in the coming year, while 37% will keep their current budget. Furthermore, only 5% of respondents planned on decreasing digital budget allocations.

Let?s examine some possible reasons for increasing or decreasing budgets.

The Case for Increasing Digital Budgets

For many business owners, digital has become a fact of their marketing life and a major part of their overall marketing strategy. Many of these owners have become aware of the power and scope of digital marketing and many marketing departments are beginning to develop effective strategies as well as the means to?allocate funds and analyze metrics.

While social media, content, and SEO are three of the most popular and cost effective inbound tactics, they are also three of the most difficult to effectively analyze. The growth of marketing automation and other technologies has reduced the amount of time and the expense of expanding into other digital channels.

Mobile has become more prevalent as a medium as more consumers begin to turn to their mobile devices, and tablets to conduct business. Companies that are migrating to mobile are increasing budgets to retool websites using responsive design techniques in order to take advantage of the exponential growth in mobile computing.

As targeting has become more precise, Pay-Per-Click and paid search are areas of growth in corporate budgets. Automation has made email marketing more effective and cost efficient as well, and companies are increasing the use of email marketing to grow qualified leads and lead prospective customers through their sales funnel. If you are looking to migrate your marketing more towards digital channels, these are areas to consider.

The Case For Budget Decreases

While the majority of companies are maintaining, or increasing budgetary expenditures towards digital marketing, there are some instances where a decrease or reallocation may be prudent.? The fact is that many early adopters of digital strategies jumped into the market without a reasonable strategy or understanding of the options. It is reasonable, to step back and reassess budget allocations if your digital strategy has proven ineffective.

Digital marketing is here to stay. Advances in the number and quality of media channels means that effective strategies can be developed as cost effective alternatives to traditional media. As a business owner, it?s important to understand your options and how to evaluate their effectiveness when building a digital strategy for your company.

Part of this understanding comes from knowing the industry and current strategies like those revealed in the?Digital Marketing Strategy Report by Marketing Matters in partnership with Ascend2. Analyze data and optimize your tactics. Get started by clicking the button below.