According to a new report from Econsultancy and Responsys , just over two-thirds (70 percent) of businesses are planning to increase investment in digital marketing technology in 2014, whereas 28 percent maintain and just 2 percent decreases investments.
CRM takes the top spot when it comes to technology investment, with half (49%) of companies surveyed planning to spend more in this area (up by 4% in the last 12 months).
Other areas organizations are likely to be increasing investment in are business analytics and web analytics software (47%), email platforms (40%) and content management systems (40%).
The year-on-year comparison shows there has been a significant decline in the proportion of organizations that plan to increase investment in social media management systems, from over a third (38%) in 2013 to a quarter (26%) this year.
Compared to last year, fewer companies are planning to increase their investment in paid search/bid management (-8%), video advertising (-6%) and cross-channel/multichannel campaign management (-4%).
Learnings
Paid Search/bid management, video advertising and multichannel campaign management are relatively established practices; lifecycle wise, marketing organizations are –usually- looking at cost-efficiencies and therefore getting the same or more for the same or lower amount of investment.
The fact that social media investments don’t further increase is due to the fact that many of those systems provide an (almost) one-stop-shop and for those that have licenses revenue models, at one point the clients’ marketing organization is saturated with licenses.
Do any of the increases in marketing investments surprise you?
This article was originally published on Feb 28, 2014 and provided by Data-Driven-Marketing.net