How Should You Be Allocating Your Online Marketing Budgets for 2012?

To all of the business owners out there wrapping up and finalizing your marketing budgets for 2012, it’s crucial to keep in mind that it is more important than ever to get on the digital marketing bandwagon so you don’t get left behind.

The statistics don’t lie: 35% of today’s consumers (using US citizens as an example) are spending 3 hours or more online every day – and 57% use the web every single day. While doing so, their time is divided between several activities: 94% check their e-mails, 87% spend time making queries on search engines and 78% spend time researching products.

Ignoring online channels means you’re ignoring the massive opportunity to reach people where they’re spending a significant amount of time. Online marketing also enables you to directly target and reach consumers when they are in the middle of the buying cycle and effectively track the path to purchase.

As web usage continues to grow, more and more businesses (your competitors, perhaps?) are cluing in and shifting their marketing spend online towards search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing. The time to act is now – not once you’ve fallen even further behind.

I recently found this fantastic infographic from 6S Marketing uncovering the percentage of marketing budgets currently allocated towards digital marketing and the trends of what to expect for 2012.

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If you would like to learn more about how to incorporate online tactics into your marketing strategy, give us a shout and we’ll help get you started!