The number of companies that invest in online marketing is growing by the day, and the amount they spend is growing by the minute. Investment in activities like search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing is now really starting to take money away from the more traditional, offline marketing campaigns. A new study from Forrester Research shows just how large this marketing budget shift will be.
Looking at companies in the US, Forrester expects the amount of money spent on internet marketing activity to increase from the $23 billion that was spent last year, to almost $55 billion in 2014. This extra money is, for the most part, being taken from the more traditional marketing avenues, like print advertising and direct mail.
60% of the companies interviewed by Forrester stated that to fund further ventures into the digital world they would be "shifting money away from traditional marketing." Only 14% of respondents said they would be increasing spend for online marketing as well as offline forms of marketing.
Direct mail is the traditional marketing method that will be hit the hardest over the next five years. 40% of companies said that they will be decreasing the amount spent here to fund further online activity. If the companies interviewed are representative of US businesses as a whole then print media will also feel a very real change. Owners of newspapers can expect a 35% reduction in advertising spend and magazine publishers will see client budgets drop by 28%.
With internet marketing proving itself more cost effective and easier to measure than traditional marketing campaigns, companies have been making the transition for years. This research shows that these changes are starting to accelerate, even though it is something that has been predicted by experts within the online marketing world for a while. Last month the Society of Digital Agencies released a report that showed how more than 87% of advertising agencies and 73% of digital marketing agencies have started moving their own marketing budgets from offline to online. If we’re all now doing this, then shouldn’t you be too?