Social Media’s Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets?

A survey that looks at business-to-business marketing mix and budget trends. With many parts of West still feeling the effects of last year’s economic downturn, survey show some marked changes on which tactics marketers choose to spend their limited budget – we’re especially interested in the impact of social media on the marketing mix. 

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- Digital spending moved ahead but failed to shake up the status quo. While B2B marketers wrestle with a more complex marketing mix, digital channels have finally gained much needed mind share. Web sites and email topped the list of the most popular marketing tactics, and search marketing moved up six percentage points since our last report. However, conventional approaches like trade shows, PR, direct mail, print advertising, sponsorships, and executive events still dominated the marketing mix in 2009. Will 2010 show even more dramatic changes?

- Traditional tactics commanded the lion’s share of B2B budgets. Conventional marketing tactics continued to capture big chunks of B2B marketer budgets. In fact, traditional tactics had a tight grip on the five top spots in our list of the most expensive B2B tactics. Coming in sixth, the company Web site was the only digital tactic to scrape together a double-digit percentage of the budget.

- Social media managed to make only a few budget inroads in 2008-09. Virtual trade shows, community sites, rich media (video, pod casts, etc.), blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools like RSS subscriptions, mashups, and widgets got the B2B budget scraps. Yet, while marketers try to work out social media’s place in the marketing mix, we were pleased to see, when taken together, these tactics accrued more than 10% of the marketing budget. this year may show some surprising changes in this category. Marketing tactic choices and budgets may have changed, comments welcome. (Sources: http://seotrends.in)