This study from MarketingCharts.com is showing that digital advertising continues to grow as traditional media marketing spending continues to decline.
From the report:
In this latest survey, CMOs forecast a 2.7% decline in traditional advertising spend over the next 12 months, after predicting a 1.9% decrease in August 2012, an 0.8% decrease in February 2012, and a 1.3% increase in August 2011.
By contrast, digital marketing spending is forecast to grow by 10.2%, a slower rate than the 11.5% increase forecast in August 2012, but a healthy rate nonetheless.
Segregating the responses by company type, the study finds that B2C service firms will pull back on traditional advertising the most (-5.4%), with B2B product companies (-4.1%) also curtailing spending. B2B services (-2.2%) and B2C product (-0.6%) companies will keep their budgets relatively flat. Each company type is projecting a double-digit increase in digital marketing spend, save for B2B product companies (+8.2%).
All in all this points to a continual move in the last few years from traditional to digital. We think it’s even more dramatic than this if you get away from the old paradigm of simply tracking marketing spend. Most of the action today is in media and on sites that don’t charge a dime for publication costs. Many of the local retailers we talk to aren’t just moving from paid print to paid digital, they’re rapidly moving from paid print to FREE digital. Sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus and a dealer’s own site are taking up much more of their time and effort today.
Free digital should be a big part of your local marketing efforts and should make you rethink your co-op rules and how your ad builder works to help your dealers reach today’s consumer.