While ad spending in social, mobile marketing and data analytics is steadily increasing, the established digital marketing materials such as email, paid search and SEO will dominate retailer marketing budgets for the coming year. This is one of the findings from the whitepaper published by the Bronto Software which looks at the marketing landscape for 2012. They interviewed over 100 retailers about their expectations for the coming year. From the report:
Under today’s frenetic pace, it has become more important than ever to develop a solid 2012 plan. As consumers are more accessible via more channels, retailers must make choices about how to best deploy their finite marketing resources. The e-tailing group, in sponsorship from Bronto, a marketing platform for commerce, took a two-pronged approach to exploring the current marketing madness.
When asked how prepared they were, more than half of the respondents said they were prepared for the coming year, but about one third of respondents still admitted to feeling underprepared for 2012.
30% said they are planning to invest in paid search for their online and cross-channel marketing budget, followed by email (18%) and SEO (11%). Only 4% named SMS/Mobile as their top investment.
For revenue generation, retailers said that they expect the top performing channels to be SEO (31%), mobile (including m-commerce, iPads and apps – 30%) email (22%), paid search (22%) and social media (14%).
For mobile and/or social networks, Facebook is the preferred site with 87% of respondents using it now, closely followed by Twitter with 82%. 8% said they plan to try each of those networks in the next year. While Mobile is currently a much-discussed topic, the actual adoption is still relatively low, but the willingness to adopt some form of mobile marketing is very much present: 31% are planning to use QR codes in the coming year, and 27% are planning on a mobile application.
As regards data analytics, there is room for improvement. Just under half (49%) are satisfied with their ability to acces the right data to segment customers effectively, and a mediocre 43% call their data digestible.
e-tailing concludes:
Merchants must address their current data scenario and make the crucial decisions necessary to control marketing and optimize selling. It is likely to be an evolution but having a path to follow is better than heading down a road with limited access and poor data choices.
Read the full report at e-tailing.com.
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