What is in store for 2015

Marketers received a healthy portion of companies' budgets in 2014, and that might be increasing in 2015. According to the "Presentation for CMO Survey 2015: Eye on the Buyer” report by research firm Gartner, companies spent, on average, 10.2% of their annual revenue on marketing activities in 2014. And now half of the companies that were surveyed plan to increase their spending in 2015, which translates out to a budget increase of 10.4%.

But there is devil is in the details.  Bigger companies are getting bigger budgets. As an example, companies with revenues of $5 billion or more anticipate using 11% of their money to marketing, while companies with revenues between $500 million and $1 billion ONLY plan to allocate 9.2%. 46% of respondents plan on spending less than 9% of their revenue on marketing and 30% intend to allocate more than 13%, and 24% plan to use some percentage in between. Now I know most of you if not all are not this size or even close but it does not hurt to pay attention to where the Big Boys are playing and what they are playing with.

So where is all this extra money going? One work: DIGITAL! According to the report, 51% of these companies plan to increase their digital marketing budget in 2015. The average boost will be 17%. That increase will give digital a significant hunk of the overall marketing budget. More so when we considering that companies used about 25% of their marketing budgets on digital in 2014.

For some marketers budget allocation is a tough one to crack because not all companies have separate digital marketing budgets. Sixty-eight percent of companies do, according to the report. But marketers waffle on what a digital marketing budget encompasses. Thirty-two percent of respondents consider digital a single line item of the overall marketing budget, while 36% itemize each digital activity. In addition, 23% have incorporated digital marketing into each function of the marketing budget and 8% have done none of the above.

Larson Notes & Satire:  I hate to say it (no I don’t) but if you don’t keep your spending on the traditional ways of marketing you’re going to be really lost. Digital is not a stand alone marketing channel. Well maybe to some but to most of you out there, you need the support of email, web site, content, direct mail, trade show and of course TELEMARKETING. And now with our new service offering of INBOUND call answering and ACT social media software we at putting more of what you need  together for you.

For the answer to your sales and lead generation problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.