Where Should You Put Your Marketing Budget This Year? | SMB Forum by Web.com

How are you planning to adjust your marketing budget in 2015—and how does that measure up to what your competition is doing? According to recent data in MediaPost, the top three areas where marketers will increase spending in 2015 are:

• Email marketing – 61 percent
• Social media – 49 percent
• Mobile marketing – 40 percent

Where are they cutting back? The three are where marketers will cut marketing budgets are:

• Print advertising – 33 percent
• Direct mail – 22 percent
• Radio/television advertising – 18 percent

Although marketers are spending more of their marketing budget on social media, they’re still struggling with how to measure and define success. Forty-three percent say they lack the in-house resources and skills to do social media marketing right, while 42 percent say they can’t measure ROI and 39 percent say they lack an effective social media strategy.

In terms of email marketing, businesses are boosting the marketing budget with an eye to using automation and data about customers to develop more relevant emails. Specifically, 42 percent will invest more of the marketing budget in triggered emails and 41 percent will spend more on lifecycle emails in 2015.

Breaking down lifecycle marketing plans further, here’s where marketers will put the marketing budget for lifecycle email marketing in 2015:

• Loyalty – 45 percent
• Welcome – 36 percent
• Winback/reengagement – 27 percent
• Post-purchase – 27 percent

How can you capitalize on these marketing budget trends?

• Use available data on customers to develop targeted emails you can use throughout the lifecycle. It’s easier to keep an existing customer than to attract a new one, so make sure you continue engaging with customers via email not only pre-purchase, but after the purchase, too.
• Ask your email marketing service about automation tools you can use to trigger emails after events such as abandoned shopping carts, browsing a product category or after a certain time has passed without a customer shopping with you.
• Develop metrics for measuring results of social media marketing. Beyond likes and shares, how does social media drive website traffic and conversions? By tracking these metrics, you’ll be better able to develop a smart social strategy for your business.

Photo by Tim Wright on Unsplash

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