Rough Year Predicted for Radio and Print

Sounds like all those predictions about print media dying off are starting to come true. A recent survey of over 1000 marketers, conducted by Econsultancy and ExactTarget shows that marketers are moving over to digital advertising where the marketing dollar goes a lot further. In fact, it’s predicted that 28% of marketers will be switching from print or radio to digital. That’s good news for online media, bad news for offline resources.

“The research shows a healthy outlook for the digital marketing industry with the majority of responding companies increasing their budgets for most digital channels,” said Linus Gregoriadis, research director at Econsultancy. “Social media marketing is the area where companies are most likely to be spending more money but areas such as search engine marketing and email marketing will remain buoyant.”

Nearly 48% of marketing companies surveyed said that their clients didn’t put any or much money into online marketing because they don’t understand how it works. That being said, 70% of in-house marketers plan to implement social media marketing into their budget this year, making room for people to create a business presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

Entrepreneur Herman Friedman said that“The shift from offline to online is in full swing as marketers look to measure direct increases in top-line sales, site traffic and improve overall marketing return on investment. Interestingly, brand reputation is becoming a more significant driver of the migration to digital marketing, particularly when it comes to social media.”