Nowadays, marketing is considered the most crucial budget line for many consumer-oriented businesses, and media is usually its major component. Over the past few years, media inflation has become a persistent issue for advertisers due to the high increase in pricing, such as high-tech tools, interest rates rising, and many other factors, with an average worth of 6% to 8% annually in the US. In such a way, it would be great to see how other marketers are dealing with this matter.
In times when the economy is up in the air, one conceivable strategy for marketers is to pay attention to cost-effective marketing approaches that will let you earn a high return on investment (ROI). However, this kind of approach includes multiple tactics, such as focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and email marketing. Employing these tactics might be comparatively low-priced but can be truly effective in driving website traffic and generating leads.
Based on the 8032 marketers’ surveys, the blog has compiled some of the decisions that marketers are going to make in the upcoming years.
Earned Media
Let’s pay closer attention to each earned media channel to see how the market budgets are being modified.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The research shows that 68% of businesses look forward to improving their SEO spending. The major reason for implementing this is that it lets the businesses achieve a greater outcome and enhance the ROI. True, but it requires a lot of patience to result in you.
11% of them declared that they were not going to stop the SEO budget throughout the year 2023. The most obvious justification for doing this is that there wasn’t any flexibility remaining in their overall marketing budget due to economic constraints.
Organic social media
According to global research, 32% of marketers plan to increase their spending on organic social media. The primary cause was the changes in Apple IOS, and another is they don’t have enough budget to spend on sponsored social media.
On the other hand, 26% of the businesses stated that they would keep their budget maintained with everything as it is necessary to be on multiple major platforms to interact with the customer and potential clients.
Content
83% of companies are here, giving a boost to content-making budgets. It is essential to deliver content in different types, specifically video, as the cost is associated with it. For instance, if people search for “Can You Write Your Own Biography on Wikipedia,” you can provide them an informative content about it and increase the click-through rate.
8% of the marketers directed they will bond themselves with their spending plan. The reason was the economic situation that was limiting their capability to spend more. Since AI tools make it easier to produce content affordably, 9% of them said they are taking their hands back from the development of content.
AI Tools
If you see the percentage of people using AI tools, 98% of respondents said they would keep spending their money on AI products throughout 2023 and beyond. The primary reason for integrating this is that they save a lot of the marketer’s money by creating automated content. They do not need to hire anyone permanently for the purpose of writing. Another great advantage of using AI tools is that it takes less time to create content. And ultimately reduce the number of employees in the content creation department.
While 2% of the respondents claimed that they would not make use of use of AI tools because they believe the quality of tools doesn’t meet their required expectations.
Email Marketing
The research shows 56% of companies all around the will arise their spending for email marketing. However, the reason for saying these marketers is because they would raise their budgets. Firstly, it must spend more to store email addresses due to the growth of its list. As a result of data protection laws, businesses are spending more to make sure they are complying with personal data. Companies are investing more in digital marketing.
38% of businesses intend to continue using email marketing. The key justification given was that they thought email was a crucial avenue for reaching out to both current and new clients.
UX/Conversion Rate Optimization
Companies plan to spend 61% more overall on User experience. It was debatable as to the main justification for wanting to increase their overall spending in this area. With the rising cost of advertising, CRO aids in delivering a higher ROI. Though, UX is essential to the entire marketing process. The same 26% of businesses intend to maintain their current UX/CRO budgets, mostly for the same reasons mentioned above.
During these economically unpredictable times, companies will be able to increase growth owing to these cost-effective marketing techniques.