In May 2023, Digital Commerce 360 conducted our ninth-annual digital marketing survey. Questions ranged from budgets to performance. We reviewed many aspects of digital marketing, from the challenges and issues of the day to measuring campaign success. We surveyed retailers across 25 categories, allowing us to provide various perspectives.
Digital marketing budgets are wide-ranging with surveyed retailers breaking out their percentage of overall marketing dedicated to digital as follows:
- 1-10% of Marketing: 21%
- 11-50%: 25%
- >50%: 46%
- None: 8%
Digital continues to see greater traction, as 59% of retailers have increased their digital marketing budgets for 2023. Meanwhile, 27% of retailers said their digital marketing budget is unchanged and just 14% have decreased it. Digging into the numbers among those who projected increases, 14% of retailers said the digital marketing budget will grow 21% or more. At the same time, 33% said a 10-20% increase. The remaining 12% expect a limited budget increase of just 1-5%.
Retailers Employ a Myriad of Digital Marketing Techniques.
As part of their digital marketing strategies, six in 10 retailers employ email, content, and search marketing, along with paid search and Facebook. Other tactics that at least half of respondents used were social-media-minded. They include Facebook (62%), Instagram (52%), YouTube (52%), and TikTok (30%).
Just under half (47%) also employed other influencer marketing and social media. Affiliate marketing rounded out the list of tactics (51%). Other advertising that deserves an honorable mention, include mobile ads at 44% and Amazon ads at 41%, while marketplace ads came in at 36%. It was insightful to see SMS/text messaging on the list for 38%. Connected TV also made the cut for just 20%.
Varying Budgets for Marketing Tactics
Retailers dedicate the most budget to email, paid search, content, and search engine marketing.
Now that we know what tactics are in play, we looked to understand what percentage of retailers’ marketing budgets each of the tactics represented. From a budget standpoint, email and paid search were nearly tied for the No. 1 position when it came to spending 11% of their budget or more. Next in line was content marketing at 35% and search engines at 33%.
Credit:-https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2023/06/08/the-retailer-speaks-digital-marketing-2023/