Allocating marketing budgets in 2011

It's always useful to be able to compare the way your marketing budget split to others for different marketing approaches. Particularly if changes in allocation are highlighted and ideally if the budgets are for similar companies. A new international survey from Econsultancy and SAS helps with this.

With permission, this post includes a summary of the main findings of the report:  Marketing Budgets 2011 and charts of the budget mix.

Summary of marketing budgets report

Proportion of marketing budget allocated to digital channels

This chart suggests that if you are investing less than 10 or 20% of budget on digital then you may be out of step with your competitors and certainly consumption of digital media by your prospects and customers. However, there are many in this category and this may be appropriate for their market.

Proportion of marketing budget spent on digital marketing. Source: Econsultancy Mar 2011.

This chart would be more useful split out by market or industry, but it does provide a benchmark against your current spending.

Allocation of budget to digital media channels

Variation in different digital marketing tactic used 2010-2011. Source: Econsultancy. Feb 2010.

For those involved in allocation in a current budgeting cycle, this chart will certainly be interesting. As many readers would expect social media, usefully split into on-site, i.e. blogs, communities, reviews, comment and offsite social presence, is receiving an increase by many organisations.

A couple of other notable features of the survey are the other winners and losers.

The trusted digital stalwarts, search engine optimisation (down compared to last year0 and email marketing are receiving significant increased investment.

Paid search, display advertising and affiliate marketing have had a small resurgence compared to 2011.

One final observation on the report I'd have is that the agencies interviewed appear pretty judgemental of client companies, there are several instances in the report where agencies rate client companies much lower than the companies themselves do, for example 23% companies rate themselves as good at measuring social media ROI, whereas 9% of agencies rate their clients as good. Maybe this is a perception problem and agencies or just not close enough to the commercial reality or the internal political realities that companies face?