With the first good habit for your marketing budget, you’ve created an annual marketing plan. Now it’s time to figure out what you’re going to spend all those hard-earned dollars on?
Your second good habit is to focus on media spending. It’s a capstone of your promotion strategy. According to a survey sent out to its B2B subscribers, Target Marketing found that 25.4 percent of respondents are increasing their marketing media budgets, 18.4 percent are decreasing their budgets, around 50 percent are staying the same, while the rest fell into the “don’t know” category.
When they spend those media dollars, you can bet they will focus on a few key areas:
- Direct mail — Direct mail is the grandfather of media, and it still drives response. While direct mail has likely plateaued — and is in a small decline — it’s still a viable tool that isn’t going away anytime soon.
- Email — If direct mail is the grandfather media, consider email the digital grandfather of media. Email as a media option is nearly universal in every marketer’s toolbox. We see that most marketers are becoming more and more selective about the lists and sends they’re using, though.
- Search — While Google’s search-algorithm changes may be messing with some marketers’ SEO movements, anyone who pays attention to trackable traffic to their website still sees value in investing in search. Ham-fisted SEO schemes may be a thing of the past, but search is going to continue.
- Traditional media — Maybe you haven’t picked up a magazine or newspaper lately, but, at least in B2B, there’s still considerable money being spent on traditional media outlets. While marketers are likely to pair up print and Web campaigns for traditional media, don’t discount that print is still being included in those buys.
- Social media — The newest kid on the block may seem like a lot of hype, but spending is starting to increase in this area. While companies once used social primarily in efforts focused on increasing fans and followers, there has been a shift to thinking about social media as a channel, with all of the measurement and spending that goes into it.
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