Mediaboss Marketing

Content has become the foundation on which brands build loyalty with their digital audiences. According to StrongView, over 90 percent of business leaders will increase or maintain their marketing budgets in 2014.

Fifty-two percent of the 387 business leaders surveyed plan to increase email marketing spend, while 46 percent will invest in stronger social media marketing campaigns. Brands will also ramp up spending on search marketing (41 percent) and display advertising (36 percent). The research notes businesses will decrease spend on print advertising (32 percent), direct mail (21 percent), radio and television (17 percent), and trade shows and events (15 percent).

The StrongView research doesnt mention content marketing, however none of these outreach options would succeed without high-quality content. According to the recent Content Marketing Gets Social survey, 51 percent of brands create original content for distribution across their social channels and an additional 30 percent plan to do so moving forward.

The Custom Content Councils 2013 Spend Studydemonstratesthe value of original content creation for brands. The ability to educate prospects was cited as the primary benefit of content creation by 49 percent of respondents, and 29 percent said it was a secondary benefit. Surveyed brands also noted customer retention and loyalty were important reasons to implement content campaigns. Data shows an overall increase in marketing budgets by 13.7 percent in 2013, with branded content garnering 37 percent of that total.

Content marketing has reached a perfect storm. All channels including print, digital and social are growing, Custom Content Councils Executive Director Lori Rosen said. Every major brand has embraced content media leading to higher quality, higher impact and higher ROI.

As brands spend more to promote themselves across the web, a greater focus on multi-channel strategies is inevitable. The variety of channel options available, as shown in these three reports, further supports the need to be everywhere at once to reach always-on consumers.

Photo credit: Flickr

Tags: content marketing, featured, marketing budgets, social media

Category: Advertising, Agencies, Brands, Business, Content Marketing, Industry Insight, Media, SEO, Social Media

Continue reading here:
Increased Marketing Budgets Create Opportunities for Multi-Channel Strategies