January 03, 2008

2008 Online Spending Forecasts Look Great for B2B

Most business-to-business (B2B) marketers plan to increase their 2008 marketing budgets - but 79% of them plan to increase their online marketing budgets, according to BtoB magazine’s “2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans” study.

George Assimakopoulos
Principal Manager

BtoB’s previous survey (2006) had found that nearly 76% of marketers planned to increase their online budgets in 2007. Here are some other key findings from BtoB's survey this year:

Some 62% of B2B marketers said their primary goal in 2008 would be customer acquisition, 19% cited brand awareness and nearly 12% pointed to customer retention.
Online will constitute more than one-third (nearly 34%) of marketing budgets in 2008, B2B marketers said; that’s up from the nearly 27% cited for 2007.
Online areas that marketers plan to increase next year are website development (74% of marketers said so); email (70%); search engine marketing (64%); video (40%); webcasting (39%); banners (36%); sponsorships (30%); and social media (26%).
Rating ad agency partners’ willingness and ability to adapt programs according to marketing goals, 54% of B2B marketers said “OK” and 41% said “excellent.”
Rating trade-media partners’ willingness and ability to tailor programs to fit marketing goals, nearly 66% said “OK” and 28% said “excellent.”
Nearly 20% of B2B marketers say they are using social media as part of the marketing mix: Among them, 40% use them for customer feedback, 31% for market research, 29% for advertising, 27% as a sales channel.

To read BtoB's Outlook 2008 report for online marketing - CLICK HERE.