Online Marketing Grows Despite Cutbacks in Traditional Advertising

The importance of online marketing and Internet advertising to business in Great Britain was underscored by the recent release of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s “Bellwether Report”. The Belwether Report showed that businesses across the UK have been cutting advertising and marketing budgets in response to the recent economic downturn, rising costs and lower than forecast sales. The one bright spot, however, was in spending for online advertising. Of the company’s surveyed for the Belwhether Report, 19% reported that their online marketing budget had increased from the start of 2008, despite declining markets.

“Internet spending will continue to grow as more clients see the importance of this form of communication and the ability to use (the Internet), like PR, in a tactical context,” Belwhether Report author, Chris Williamson, told the Guardian in a recent interview.

That spending on Internet advertising and online marketing continues to grow when overall advertising and marketing budgets are being slashed is a testament to how profound the shift of consumers to the Internet has been for UK businesses. The small and medium-sized business who take advantage of the current economic downturn to increase their online marketing efforts and create an effective online marketing presence are going to be those businesses who best survive the current economic difficulties as well as the businesses best poised to take advantage of returning economic growth. Online marketing has a particularly pronounced “long-tail effect”, so that efforts and expenditures put in now when there is an economic downturn are apt to pay larger dividends in the future when overall marketing budgets rebound.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.