Despite economic concerns, businesses will continue to invest in key marketing programs in the coming year.
A 2009 Marketing Outlook survey released today by StrongMail Systems, Inc., the leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email. Results show that more than half (51 percent) of the nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009 to focus on programs that yield a higher return on investment (ROI (Return On Investment) The monetary benefits derived from having spent money on developing or revising a system. In the IT world, there are more ways to compute ROI than Carter has liver pills (and for those of you who never heard of that expression, it means a lot). ), such as email marketing and search marketing ( SEO & PPC ) , while many will decrease spending on costly, less targeted programs like advertising and trade shows.
StrongMail’s 2009 Marketing Outlook survey found that only 37 percent of those polled expect to see a decrease in sales in 2009 due to current economic conditions; 22 percent believe their customers will spend about the same in 2009 as in 2008; and 19 percent think their customers will spend more next year.
As such, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of companies that plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009 will bolster email marketing programs, while 44 percent will add dollars to their search marketing campaigns. Those professionals decreasing budgets in 2009 will cut spend on marketing programs that don’t typically generate as lucrative a return, such as advertising (29 percent) and trade shows (19 percent). Only four percent of companies surveyed plan to cut email marketing budgets. . ( comment by Travis in my blog )