Digital spending has always been an area of debate in almost every single company worldwide. The prominence of the digital world, thanks to social media and the internet is a key factor.
In a survey conducted by CMO Council and Adobe across Asia Pacific, with 648 marketers in the APAC region, only 13% were willing to spend more than half of their budget on digital marketing. However, after reading the trends attentively, it becomes clear that marketers are convinced about social media marketing more than ever before. As compared to earlier years, a greater percentage of marketers are willing to spend between 29% and 49% of their company’s total marketing budget on digital.
Not surprisingly, 79% of the respondents have disclosed that they are planning to increase digital budgets owing to the current market scenario which is hugely influenced by social media. Around 37% said they would spend somewhere between 10-24% of their overall budget on digital. However, 2% of the respondents still showed disappointment over digital marketing.
With the rising popularity of internet usage and the increase in the time spent over social media in the Asia-Pacific region; marketers are directing their focus towards the digital world. As a result of this, 66% respondents could see greater opportunities by increasing their spending on digital. Further, 63% of the respondents agreed that digital marketing performance has improved considerably as the results they are achieving are above average.
Digital Marketing In APAC: Key Findings
In the survey, a total of 18 questions were asked to the 648 marketers across industries in the APAC region.
The key takeaways from the study are listed below:
- In comparison to other companies in the APAC region, 36% said that their company’s performance was average while 23% saw scope for improvement.
- 50% of all the respondents consider Budget Limitations as the main challenge while executing digital marketing strategy.
- 66% of the marketers are shifting towards the digital world for better engagement with the customers while 47% look at it as a cost-effective method of acquiring or retaining customers.
- 54% marketers are focusing on a customer-centric approach with their digital marketing strategy.
- 65% of all the respondents agreed that content strategy is the key to success in their digital marketing campaign while social media remained at second best priority for the marketers.
- Finding the right talent is a worrying factor for many marketers. 61% respondents agreed that they couldn’t find the right candidates with quality skills and expertise necessary for the job.
- Even though budgets for digital marketing have always been limited, 35% of the respondents said that they have seen an increase in budgets over the past 12 years.
- 69% marketers spend most of their funding on web content, development and performance optimization while more than 50% prefer allocating funds to their social media campaigns or search engine optimization campaigns.
- Tight budgets and lack of quality skill-sets are the main challenges faced while executing digital marketing strategies.
- Conversion rates and response rates are the key metrics used to define the success of digital marketing campaigns by over 60% of the respondents.
The Road Ahead…
Geographically, it is the Indian and Australian marketers who exuded confidence when it came to the digital marketing game, with 42% marketers from India and 35% from Australia rating themselves higher as compared to China and South Korea who seemed to be lagging behind in their digital marketing agenda. Overall, the digital marketing spectrum is on the rise in APAC region.
In order to improve and get the maximum from the digital world, the focus could be on improving engagement, acquiring the right skill set and increasing the digital market budgets.
Focus on Engagement:
Promotion of a brand must be conducted in such a way that it improves engagement and interactions with the maximum mentions of the brand itself. Rather than focusing on building followers or fans or increasing traffic through the web, marketers must develop effective content strategies that help boost engagement around the brand.
Around 66% marketers from the survey considered strengthening and positioning digital content marketing strategies as their top priority while the social media engagement was listed as the next priority by 52% respondents.
Find and Hire Skilful Professionals:
Lack of quality professionals is one of the main challenges as evidenced by the responses of 61% of the overall respondents. 47% marketers from the survey mentioned that they faced problems in finding and hiring qualified talent from the industry.
Providing ample training in order to boost the skills of digital marketing professionals is one of the key areas that companies must address today to get the maximum out of their digital marketing strategies.
Increase Digital Marketing Budgets:
Almost 79% of all the respondents agreed that the budgets for digital marketing spending have increased over 12 months.
However, the increase in funding is nowhere near to the overall marketing budget allocated by the company for the same period.
Only 13% of the marketers said that more than 50% of their overall budget was allocated towards digital marketing in 2014. This was much lower than 19%, which was allocated in 2013, leaving much more to be desired.
It is of key importance that the marketing lead of a company realizes the strength of digital media and start allocating better and higher budgets for digital marketing.
To conclude it could be safely said that Digital Marketing needs to be the top priority for any organization that wishes to expand its reach out to the ever and more increasing tech savvy line of consumers.
