Published on the 03/12/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Investment in online marketing is tipped for a sharp increase in 2014 as organisations prepare to spend more on social media, email and mobile campaigns across Australia and New Zealand…
While six dollars out of every $10 invested in marketing is currently being channeled into offline marketing activities, almost three quarters of Australian and New Zealand organisations say they expect to increase their spending on online initiatives in the coming year. And, while the pioneers of online marketing have tended to be smaller organisations, larger businesses are now getting in on the act.
A new report from First Point Research and Consulting, commissioned by software company Sitecore, quizzed 330 in-house marketing executives in Australia and New Zealand in October. While it suggests more money will be invested in online marketing in the future it also reveals a lack of sophistication among marketers about how they measure the success of such programmes.
Almost three in four marketers still say that they use website visits as a measure of a campaign’s success compared to 57 percent who see online sales as a better indicator.
Sitecore sales director Kyle McManus cautioned that companies embarking on an online marketing campaign needed to establish early on what they were trying to achieve. “It might not even be about them buying what is on the website. Maybe it’s more important for them to log in through Facebook because we get all that information about a person.”
McManus said that it was important companies determined from the outset what they wanted to achieve. He offered the example of Queensland Teachers Mutual, a financial institution, which had wooed people to its website with the promise of free technology based on the number of “likes” it could achieve.
“That gamification led them to get 30,000-40,000 new members onto the database,” said McManus. It was that information base that was important to the organisation.
Whatever the intent of an online marketing campaign expect a lot more of it in the future. A report issued recently by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that overall the New Zealand online advertisement market was slated to grow 28 percent this year, while Australia would grow at a slightly more conservative 16 percent.
However Australia is leaping ahead in mobile advertising with forecasts of a 170 percent spending increase compared to 111 percent in New Zealand.
For companies operating in the space it has all the hallmarks of a bull market. Listed New Zealand company Snakk Media, which generates revenues by serving targeted adverts to mobiles and tablets, this week reported 147 percent year on year growth taking first half revenues to $NZ3 million for the first six months of the year.
