By Rudra Narayan Sahoo, Mumbai: The digital media marketing has emerged as a new game changer for brand building and product marketing. Almost 87% brands leverage digital and surprisingly 38% of them allocate 1/3rd of budget to digital marketing, finds Social Beat’s latest released Digital Marketing Industry Report 2016. Internet giants Facebook and Google are still the most popular digital marketing channels.
Social Beat’s report is based on a survey conducted in May-June 2016 while a total of 376 CMOs and Marketing Heads across India participated in the survey. The survey covers diversified sectors and verticals: E-Commerce, FMCG, Media/Entertainment, Healthcare, Education, Real Estate, and Travel.
The Industry research report finds that for marketing brands online the companies leverage social media marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing and emailers the most. Among various digital media tools, social media marketing leads with 88 % surveyed respondents saying prime digital tool, closely followed by SEO (70.97), content marketing via blogs (57%), emailers (56%), landing pages (56%) and search engine marketing (56%). Surprisingly, Mobile App is preferred by 34% brands for online advertising and branding.
Internet giants Facebook (89%) and Google (78%) have emerged as the most popular digital marketing channels followed by Twitter (56%) and LinkedIn (51%). A little more than half (51%) targets video content giant YouTube for marketing their brand. The rise in penetration of smartphones, faster internet connectivity and growing popularity of video content are main reasons prompting CMOs and marketing heads to target YouTube. Newer channels like Instagram and WhatsApp in India are in the race and offers more growth potential for brand marketing in the near future.
Speaking on the report, Social Beat Co-Founder Vikas Chawla said “The report highlights the rise of digital marketing, though brands continue to use television and print mediums to have a 360-degree approach. It was encouraging to see that 87% of the brands surveyed leverage digital marketing channels. While brand awareness and lead generation/sales seem to be the primary goals set by the CMOs, digital marketing is increasingly being leveraged for customer engagement (46%) and customer service (35%) too.”
Speaking about the survey, Suneil Chawla, Co-Founder of Social Beat, said “Around 10% brands surveyed spend more than Rs. 1 crore annually on digital marketing while around 50% brands spend more than Rs. 6 Lakhs annually. Overall, 20% brands plan to increase their digital marketing spends by 25% in the next financial year. With an expected 500 million internet users In India by 2017, brands understand the compelling opportunity on the cards to reach out to their consumers.”
