Gartner has revealed that organisations are set to increase their digital marketing spend next year according to its Digital Marketing Spending report.
More than half (51 per cent) of the companies surveyed said they were planning to increase their digital marketing budgets by 17 per cent with customer experience technology, such as programmatic trading which serves the right advert at the right time, fuelling increased spending.
Jake Sorofman, research director at Gartner, commented: “The amount of the marketing expense budget spent on customer experience in 2014 is remarkably consistent across all key survey demographics, averaging 18 per cent. The survey also found that the highest marketing technology investment in 2014 is for customer experience. Customer experience is also considered by many companies to be the top innovation project, just edging out product innovation.”
Gartner managing vice president, Yvonne Genovese, said that “digital marketing was the number one-ranked CEO priority” over the next five years thanks to connected devices and the growing Internet of Things.
Genovese added: “It comes as little surprise that the digital marketing spend survey found that over 60 per cent of companies that justified an addition to the marketing budget for digital marketing obtained incremental funding from elsewhere in the organisation.”
The survey predicted that digital advertising still took the biggest share of digital marketing budgets but in 2015 this will tie with mobile marketing.
Laura McLellan, research president at Gartner, explained: “The line between digital and traditional marketing continues to blur.
“For marketers in 2014, it’s less about digital marketing than marketing in a digital world. Hence, marketers manage a much more balanced and integrated marketing mix than in previous years, which were characterised by online and offline silos. The resulting digital experience moves customers toward a more self-service buying model, allowing reductions in sales budgets that were designed around older, physical models.”
The Gartner Digital Marketing Spending report is based on a survey of 315 individuals located in the US, Canada and UK and takes place in July and August 2014. Survey respondents represent organisations with more than $500m in annual revenue across six industries: financial services, high-tech, manufacturing, media, retail and transportation, and hospitality.
