Our friends at Griffin York & Krause forwarded us an email with the results of a survey BtoB Magazine did entitled "2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans". The subject was...well...marketing plans for the upcoming year (told ya I have a college degree). While there is an abundance of surveys out there that can corroborate any claim, the interactive industry should really hope the results of this one are accurate. Why?
It means the potential for a lot more green coming our way.
Allow me to give you the high-level details as you can find the down'n'dirty here:
-60.1% of marketers plan to increase their overall budgets in 2008, predominantly in online, events and direct marketing. 10.3% are planning decreases. (In a related story, 99% of accountants/finance people hope to slash marketing budgets in the upcoming year as they don't "get" what those marketing people are trying to do.)
-Big surprise: 62.4% of respondents said their primary marketing goal was customer acquisition.
-The Pray For Rain stat: 79.1% of marketers plan to boost their online budgets next year, up from 75.6% in 2007. Among those areas to increase: web development (74%), email (70.1%) and search engine marketing (64.3%). A solid 100% of all email marketing companies reading that last statement just got very excited.
Again, take these numbers with a grain of salt. Just over 200 people responded to the survey, so the sampling as a whole is a bit small. But if that sample represents a mix of the business community in our country, that's encouraging, if not expected, news. Listen, those in the industry get why email and interactive efforts WORK. It's an online world and there's no going back. Those that learn how to adapt to the online space will thrive, while those left behind will eventually wither away.
But there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. Who of us hasn't cringed at seeing a poorly-formatted email or hastily constructed website? Often, those new to the online space sacrifice quality for cheap estimates and later find themselves barely better than they were months prior. So why not do yourself a favor this holiday season: ask someone in the industry what their ideas are. Ask them to take 10 minutes to look at your site or to review a quick overview of your email marketing efforts and see what they think. If they're worth their salt and pepper, they'll do so without a big sales push or needing everything but the title to your car up front.
I wish more people asked me to review their efforts, but I think people get scared of the potential sticker shock in what the ideas will cost to implement. But it never hurts to ask and you never know what you'll get back in return. The Million-Dollar-Idea we all want could be an email dialogue away.
So what do I want this holiday season? Your questions on your efforts. I'll take anything and everything you got: email, web and everything in between. I'll review, answer and get back to you without a hard-sell. Take the info and do with it what you want. How many people do you know that ask for more work for the holidays? Drop me an email at josh@sendlabs.com anytime, day or night.
If you're a marketer reading this, there's a better way out there to handle your email/interactive work. If you're in the profession, prepare for The Great '08.