Business to business marketers are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets online, with a new report for American Business Media (ABM) revealing that nearly half of B2B marketers used online marketing tactics this year.
The
B2B Digital Marketing Shift, conducted for the ABM by Forrester Research, claimed that marketers felt that industry specific marketing was more effective than general magazines or websites, with 49% of them already using digital media.
Even marketers who claimed to be spending less on online advertising were found to allocate 24% of their budgets online, with the majority of respondents predicting the internet to soon surpass direct mail and general business magazines.
PR and trade magazines were shown to be the most effective channels for branding and in-person events, with respondents claiming that the internet was roughly equivalent to television, general business magazines and newspapers.
Looking at lead generation and in-person events, marketers claimed that PR and trade magazines were still the most effective advertising mechanism. Online marketing however, was rated equal to direct marketing and more convincing that television, general business magazines and newspapers.
The report found that B2B marketing spend was divided into various sections, with events, direct mail and trade magazines, three of the most effective tools as reported by respondents, only getting 15%, 9% and 7%, respectively. Online and web marketing accounted for 21% of adspend.
These findings are confirmed by research from online magazine, Direct, which found that marketers are shifting their adspend onto online, with 60% planning to raise their online advertising expenditure in 2006 (see Marketers Move Adspend Online).
The 2005 Online Marketing Survey shows that marketers are allotting 41% of marketing budgets to online channels this year, taking money away from traditional direct marketing channels. The survey found that marketers allocated 75% for the traditional channels last year, compared to just 59% this year.
Online advertising is expanding at an impressive rate, with new figures from Nielsen//NetRatings finding that during October online advertisers in the US enjoyed 124.5 billion display impressions, up from 110.2 billion in September (see Online Advertising Continues To Surge).
According to the latest figures from the IAB and PwC, US advertising revenues reached a total of $3.1 billion in the third quarter of 2005, marking the highest quarter on record reported and showing quarterly online adspend to have surpassed $3 billion for the first time (see US Online Adspend Surpasses $3 Billion In Q3 2005).
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