The Rise of Digital Marketing

Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, just came out with their Marketing Budgets Report 2016 and found that digital marketing in organizations is on the rise.  The survey queried 500 businesses to ascertain what their plans, goals and challenges were for digital marketing.  On the whole, the outlook is good with 72% of companies increasing digital marketing budgets.  But that does not mean the digital marketing space is without its challenges.  In some cases, the responses indicated that the companies marketing executives work for, do not fully appreciate or understand the value of digital marketing. We see this as a continuing challenge and is why our online marketing company in New York is focused on online marketing education.

The report found that there are three main barriers to digital marketing budgets reaching their potential:

• Attitudes towards marketing budgets dip, as realities of the boardroom kick in
• Customer experience and measurability drive marketing technology spend
• Culture is stifling innovation… and the budget

These attitudes prompted, 33% of respondents to admit “…that ‘company culture‘ was one” big hurdle. In 2015, this figure was only 24%,  so the rise in these barriers have sent signals that digital marketing plans may not be resonating with the C-level or boardroom group, even in 2016.

Another challenge was the percentage of paid media versus owned or earned.  Owned and earned refer to more organic web results – such as social media captures and search engine optimization.  Paid media can be search engine marketing and buying ad placements.  While earned and owned did not change much in 2016 versus other years, the amount of marketers dropping paid media rose from 9% up to 16%.  Experts believe this could be due to some cyber-security issues permeating the web such as “ad blocking and ad fraud.”

Overall, the report was positive but seemingly less bullish than in 2015.  Owing to some positive changes, the digital marketing report did highlight that some of the responses do believe they are working “…towards cohesive CX, breaking down silos, securing boardroom buy-in … reserving budget for innovation, or breaking the distinction between digital and traditional budgets.”

Another indication that digital marketing is on the rise (despite some of the aforementioned challenges),  “…54% of respondents are planning to recruit more people into their digital team in 2016 – this is an increase from 51% in 2015.”