About 65 percent of chief marketing officers surveyed recently by Epsilon say their ad budgets will decrease because of the troubled economy, but more of their money will go toward digital/interactive marketing than before. About 63 percent of the 175 CMOs and marketing execs surveyed report that their spending on interactive and digital marketing has risen, while 59 percent report a decrease in traditional marketing spending.
Those attitudes typically have been important only for media and content providers in the past. These days, those attitudes are important for telcos and mobile providers as well as potentially millions of smaller content providers as well, since blogs and social marketing are at the top of the list of new media CMOs are shifting attention to.
At the same time, 94 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “A tough economic period is precisely the time when marketing plays a key role.”
To offset budget cuts, CMOs are shifting to more targeted and measurable marketing strategies. When asked how their firm determines target market for each channel, 50 percent said they use data-driven marketing techniques: 31 percent stated they use modeling tools to analyze existing customer data (behavioral, preference and demographic) and 19 percent said that they analyze past purchase behavior. In contrast, 28 percent said they made “rough estimates based on past experience.”
CMOs have been early adopters of new media with social computing and blogs receiving the most interest, and instant messaging and interactive TV ads least popular.
Social computing (including word of mouth, social networking sites, viral advertising and so forth.) was the most popular emerging channel with 42 percent of marketing executives expressing interest in adding it to their marketing mix.
Blogs were the second-most-popular emerging channel, with 35 percent of marketers expressing desire to use them and 19 percent already using them.
Almost a third of CMOs mentioned podcasting as an area of interest, with 31 percent interested in adding it to their marketing mix and 18 percent already having done so.
Some 29 percent are interested in Mobile Devices (phones/PDAs) and 22 percent have added them to their marketing mix.
About the survey: The survey was conducted in August 2008. Participants included 175 US CMOs and marketing executives of some of the largest brands in the nation. Some 27% of respondents work at companies with $10 billion or more in annual revenues last year.
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