B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine

B2B Online Marketing Budgets Set to Grow in ’07 – Will Yours?

February 28th, 2007 Posted by: Bill Gadless

BtoB Magazine’s 2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans survey of 569 B2B marketing executives is out, and contains some surprising results.  According to a nice summary of the study by the folks at MarketingVOX, more than three-fourths of B2B marketing executives say they plan to increase their online budgets next year.
 
Interestingly, the biggest slice of the larger online marketing budgets – nearly a third – will go toward website development.  The next-largest pieces are email at 21.8%, search (18.7%) and webcasts (8.8%).  Banner advertising and sponsorships are nearly off the radar screen, at under 6% each.  A combined 7.6% is expected to be allocated to online video, blogs, RSS, product listings and lead-generation programs. Probably no surprise on this:  customer acquisition will be the primary marketing goal for next year (said 60%+ of respondents), followed by brand awareness with less than 20% and customer retention at 11%. Among offline vehicles, direct mail and events will see increased spending, for 50 and 44 percent of respondents respectively.  The one-time Goliaths of print, broadcast and outdoor advertising will not see significant increases in ’07, says the survey.These results are consistent with an offline-to-online shift in marketing spending that we’ve noticed among our clients for some time now.  At this point, it would seem prudent for every B2B to ask themselves, “Are we on the train? …or on the tracks??”
 

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy, Web Design, Internet Marketing