20pc of marketers spend more than half their budgets online

31 May 2012

Irish marketing executives are spending more of their marketing budgets online, according to a new survey. One in five (19.6pc) of the marketers said they now spent more than half their marketing budgets online.

The 2012 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey, published by AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Institute of Ireland, looks at digital marketing trends and how Irish marketers treat social media in their overall marketing mix.

It found that 58pc of marketers say online marketing offers greater return on investment than other formats.

The top reasons for using it are customer engagement (74pc), value for money (63pc) and optimising reach (57pc).

The most popular formats are email campaigns (67pc), social networking/blogs (63pc) and search engine optimisation (57pc).

70pc of marketers engage with Facebook

Some 70pc of the companies used Facebook. Twitter and LinkedIn were both at 61pc, and 44pc used YouTube – all four of these channels showed an increase on last year’s survey.

“The survey found that the top reasons that marketers are using social media are to build brand awareness and build relationships with audiences,” said Fiachra Ó Marcaigh of AMAS. “Used properly, social media has immense potential as a relatively low-cost marketing tool.”

“The marketing mix is also increasingly mobile,” said Tom Trainor of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. “More than one-third of the companies said they used mobile websites for marketing, 30pc used QR codes and 25pc used apps.”

The survey was conducted among 347 Irish marketers by AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Institute of Ireland. More than two-thirds of the respondents had budgetary responsibility for their business’ marketing functions.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com