The Fuel Blog

POSTED BY: Martyn King - Tuesday 07th February 2012

Marketing executives split on budgets

OK, here’s the split.  In Q4 of 2011 20% of marketing executives reported an upward revision of marketing budgets leading to “Marketing Spend Revised Up” headlines on many marketing websites.  Scroll down a little bit and you will see that 19% are reducing their budgets.  So what is going on?  We take a look at the latest IPA Bellweather Report survey of marketing experts in 300 UK companies.

If you throw on top the survey also found that marketing executives’ confidence for the industries in which they operate has fallen to an 11-quarter low, the picture becomes very gloomy indeed.  On the face of it the marketers, the bright sparks, the optimists are taking a real hammering.

For those of you who don’t follow the quarterly trends you could be forgiven for thinking that overall investment would be roughly in line the general economic outlook – pretty much flat.  The reality is that it is up 0.6% according to the report.

But as always, the real story lies beneath the headlines.  Things are changing.  Whilst traditional media and public relations spend has been revised down slightly and sales promotion/direct marketing revised up slightly; online marketing has jumped significantly.  In Q4 of 2011 the experts’ surveyed increased Internet and search marketing activity by 13.4% and 14.9% respectively.  So whilst overall investment is pretty much stagnant, tactical manoeuvring isn’t.

Clearly the tactics used will depend very much on organisational strategy.  If a strong strategy is in place it’ll be very clear where the tactical investment needs to be made and yes that will still include so called ‘old’ marketing such as traditional media advertising and public relations.

However, the transparency through management data, ability to put in place goals and sheer insight into client/customer and potential customer/client activity will mean that online marketing investment will continue to grow while we all wonder when the real economic recovery will happen.  The question is - are you on top of all the above opportunities?  What is clear, regardless of whether you are revising your budget up slightly, or trimming it a little bit, most forward thinking organisations (including your competitors) are spending time and money in this area.

Earlier we said that marketers could be taking a real hammering.  But here at Fuel we are growing year in, year out by helping our clients perform on tight budgets.  It is a strategy that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

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