Renewed focus for digital marketing channels
The world of digital marketing is alive and well, according to a study by Ipsos Reid, which found that North American marketers continue to focus and increase efforts on digital marketing with spend levels in social media, mobile, search and email marketing all being expected to increase.
The study, conducted with the Canadian Marketing Association and Marketing Magazine, asked Canadian marketers about their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours toward the expanding world of digital marketing, and how their business is managing or embracing it, and found that the principles driving best practice in digital marketing continue to mirror best practices in traditional marketing: being consistent, being relevant, and knowing your audience.
"Now more than ever before, digital marketers need to ensure that the right audience is targeted with the appropriate media. Increasingly we see gaps opening up between the level of effort expended by the Marketing community and consumer willingness to receive information via these mediums," said Steve Levy, Ipsos Reid's president, and principal author of the study. "There's a lot of activity in micro blogging (such as Twitter) and social media spaces, but we just aren't seeing a public appetite to receive marketing information via these channels that mirrors this time, effort and money."
At the same time, digital marketers must continue to respect privacy, to offer an easy opt-out process, and to ensure that the content is relevant to their audience.
As recently as in 2010, 38% of the marketers said that their spending on TV would decrease over the following two years, while in 2011 that number had dropped to only 22%. Marketers appear to be reconsidering the trend to reduce budgets allocated to television, with fewer indicating plans to spend less than the previous year (an 11% net decrease in 2011 compared to a 25% net decrease in 2010).
"Is this change related to an economy that bounced back in 2011, or does it reflect a widespread reset in marketing sentiment, or is it simply a realisation that TV is still unparalleled for its ability to reach a wide audience?" asked Levy. "Indeed, the whole concept of television continues to evolve. More marketers are creating video to be used in multiple viewing media - with coincident shifts in production values - rather than focusing solely on production for TV."
The world of digital marketing is constantly shifting and responding to new technologies and consumer acceptance, and the shifts we are seeing now are likely to be important ones that digital marketers should watch carefully.
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