Interactive marketing spending up despite slowing economy
According to a new Forrester survey:
“In a recession, marketers typically cut interactive spending. But our survey of 333 interactive marketers revealed strong support for maintaining or increasing budgets in categories including social networking, email, blogging, and search optimization. Among 12 major categories only online displays ads looked soft. Professional services, financial services, and media marketers are most likely to plan increases in interactive marketing. In a recession like this, marketers should focus on the measurability of their online and social applications and think in terms of building long-term assets, not one-off campaigns to boost quarterly sales.”
Forrester’s Groundswell Blog shows a nice graphic of the results too.
I certainly have seen an increase in activity and interest around social media/online conversations, such as clients asking about blogging, site comments/reviews and either participating in online communities or even starting their own. I think the sometimes immediate results and very measurable nature of online campaigns give these a permanent place in marketer’s toolboxes.
I was a little surprised about online video and mobile marketing showing only 20-30% growth optimism. But I suppose the survey was at large to medium sized companies/agencies, and not all of their client’s business may have mobile or video content needs. I do think that many companies could give much more personal impressions if they used video more… for example, why not have the CEO introduce the company via video on the main “About” page of your site? Why not have the VP of HR tell you why you should come work for that company in a quick video? These are quick, contextual and very rich interactions that would benefit greatly from online video.
Email, the old standby is still working quite well and marketers are optimistic about in in the future. Although most of the emails and landing pages I’ve seen lately could certainly use some work, email is still producing results.
I was not super surprised about the only online marketing area not producing much growth (10ish%) is display ads. I know many websites depend on those types of ads, but between crap creative, poor targeting and obnoxious execution, as well as general “banner blindness” fewer customers are finding them interesting and relevant.
Are these results reflective of your plans for the next year?
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Comments
Hey Conor,
I’m thinking that production costs don’t have to be huge to make an impact. Take sites like http://makeinternettv.org that I covered here: http://www.seven87.com/2007/04/16/online-video-for-beginners/
It doesn’t take a huge studio and expensive equipment to get some simple video up.
BTW, I like the video on your site, and adding it to email sounds like an interesting effort. Do you have issues with different email clients presenting your video? Do you have metrics on improved click rates that you’d like to share?
THanks again for the comments!
Charlie
You are absolutely right about different email clients having issues viewing the videos. To overcome this we actually use a thumbnail that we pull from the video to place as a link in the email. This increased the viewership. We are getting about 30% on average of people viewing the video. That increases tremendously with the focus of the email list. We are telling our clients that it is not “how many” emails you have but “who” is what is important.
Thanks Conor,
So just having the clickable “video-looking” image increases clicks to site/video viewership 30% sometimes? That’s pretty amazing numbers for emails!
I’m sure marketers will really respond to that! Good luck in your business! 8-)
Charlie
Charlie,
Great article! I was also surprised that online video optimism. Do you think this is because of the production costs for the bigger firms?