Marketers optimistic about increased budgets
Marketers expect their overall marketing budgets to increase in the last six months of this year, according to a survey of more than 100 top-level marketing directors.
Royal Mail’s second marketing tracking poll, in association with The Marketing Society, shows some encouraging results.
The survey suggests that UK businesses are managing to move away from cutting costs, and raising expenditure in sections such as marketing as a response to a better economic climate.
33% of the UK’s marketing directors said that they predicted an increase in marketing spend in the period of July to December, whereas only 13% of respondents thought that they would face budget cuts during the same time. This is a contrast to last year’s survey, where only 26% of respondents predicted an increase, and 25% expected a budget drop.
The results of this poll are particularly promising, as it has been shown that marketing spend tends to parallel the growth or decline of a company; therefore higher marketing spend should be followed by an increase in business investment as a whole.
Additionally, 43% of respondents said that new customers would be their primary focus for the next six months, highlighting marketers’ priority for acquisition. This is a significant increase from last year’s results, when only 28% said that they would make acquisition their main focus.
Despite this commitment to gaining new customers, 19% said that concentrating on keeping existing customers as their main priority, and 15% chose brand building as their primary concern.
SEO (search engine optimisation) was named as the most important channel by 45% of respondents, closely followed by social media with 42%, and word of mouth with 37%. E-mail proved slightly less popular, with 28%, and 27% of respondents said that they would still be using direct mail to communicate.
Mark Thomson, media director at Royal Mail, said: “[This survey] paints a positive picture for the marketing industry and indicates optimism that we will continue to climb slowly out of economic difficulty. It seems that marketers are cautiously confident for the second half of 2010 with many expecting to have more budget at their disposal.”
However, Marketing Magazine has a different take on the results of the survey: “Directors glum over budgets: Two-thirds of top-level marketers expect their budgets to be stagnant or decline in the last six months of 2010.”