With the economy up in the air due to inflation kicking into high gear, war, interest rates rising, and other factors that we can’t control we decided it would be great to see how other marketers are reacting.
And we didn’t want to know how marketers were reacting just in the U.S., we wanted to know on a global scale what businesses of all sizes in all major industries (and for both B2B and B2C) are doing.
So, at my ad agency, NP Digital, we decided to leverage our site traffic to conduct a wide survey so we could see what other marketers are doing and also find out the “why” behind their decisions.
Here’s what we found out.
Earned Media
Let’s look closely at each earned media channel to see how budgets are being reallocated.
68% of companies surveyed said they are increasing their SEO budget. The number 1 response on why they are making this is shift is because they said it provides a higher ROI than paid advertising. Which is true… it just takes longer to see results.
11% said they would maintain their SEO budget going into 2023. The number 1 response on why is because there wasn’t much flexibility with their overall marketing spend due to economic reasons.
As for the 21% that said they were decreasing… it was a toss-up on why between two main responses.
The first was that SEO wasn’t producing results and the second was that the marketing team is having to make cuts to meet their reduced budget.
32% of companies are planning on increasing their organic social media budget. The primary response was because of the Apple IOS changes, and they aren’t able to spend as much as they want on paid social media.
26% said they would keep their budget as is with the main reason being that you have to be on the major platforms in order to communicate with customers and potential customers.
A whopping 42% said they would decrease due to organic reach continually declining and organic social media not providing as high of an ROI as it used to.
If you are facing a decline in organic reach, watch this:
83% of companies are increasing their content production budget. The number 1 response on why was due to the need to create content in multiple formats including video and the cost associated with it.
8% said they would maintain their budget. The main reason why was the economic situation limiting their ability to spend more.
And 9% said they are decreasing their content creation budget due to AI tools helping them create content more affordably.
Speaking of AI tools… they are the talk of the town these days. From GTP-3 to Dall-E to ChatGPT… there are a lot of companies leveraging these APIs to create their own tools or to make their marketing more efficient. Especially with earned media.
A staggering 98% said they would invest in AI tools in 2023. The main reason why revolved around these 3 main points:
- Save money by automating content creation
- Reduce the amount of time spent on creating content
- Ability to reduce headcount in the content department
2% said they would not test out AI tools, and the main reason was they felt that the quality of the AI tools isn’t up to their standards.
Podcasting is one of those marketing channels that isn’t saturated yet. And the survey results show that marketers believe in it as a viable channel for the future.
92% of companies are planning to increase their podcasting budget in 2023. The main response was that they currently don’t have a podcast and are planning on creating one.
5% of companies are planning on maintaining their existing podcasting budget. The main response on why is they haven’t figured out how to drive meaningful revenue from their podcast so they don’t want to spend too much yet.
And 3% plan on decreasing their podcasting spend. The main reason was due to economic factors requiring marketing to make cuts.
84% of companies are increasing their spend on community building. The main reason was that marketers want to feel more in control of their destiny instead of being beholden to algorithms that they can’t control.
12% of companies plan to maintain their community building. The majority of the companies in this category felt it was important to increase their budget but they weren’t able to due to economic reasons.
And 4% plan on decreasing their community-building budget due to the economy.
Paid Ads
There are a lot of different paid ad channels, for this category we looked at the main leaders. So, let’s start off with search ads.
With Google and Bing ads, most companies (59% and 47% respectively) are looking to increase their budgets. Almost all of the responses on why were that it provided a clear ROI compared to other marketing channels.
Both channels had roughly the same percentage for maintaining the budget at 18% for Google and 19% for Bing. The main response for maintaining the budget was they haven’t figured out how to scale while maintaining profit margins.
And as for the decreases (23% for Google and 34% for Bing), the main responses were related to:
- The average cost per click for their industry is getting cheaper
- Fewer people were searching for the keywords they were bidding on so their overall spend is decreasing.
The percentages in the graph above are all over the place, but the story is consistent when you look at the responses.
With Facebook, Instagram, and Snap, the main responses for either maintaining or decreasing spend are related to the Apple IOS privacy changes. In other words, marketers aren’t able to generate the same ROI from Facebook as they used to be able to.
Some of the companies got lucky and were able to maintain their spend to generate a similar ROI and some had to decrease their spend in order to keep their ads profitable… again due to IOS privacy changes.
A smaller percentage on these 3 platforms were able to increase their budgets. The main response to increasing is that their campaigns are profitable so they plan on scaling.
As for YouTube and Pinterest, (28% and 35% respectively) said they planned on increasing their budgets. The main response was their ads are profitable and they want to scale them.
33% (YouTube) and 29% (Pinterest) plan to maintain their ad spend because their ads are profitable. The second most popular response for maintaining was they can’t scale due to it making the ads unprofitable.
As for the decrease in YouTube and Pinterest ad spend, the main response was related to the economy impacting their business and budget cuts in marketing.
With Tiktok, the majority of marketers, at a whopping 84%, said they plan to increase their overall spend on this platform because they see it as an untapped opportunity.
And with LinkedIn, the majority of the companies who responded about their LinkedIn ad spend were in the B2B category. 57% plan on increasing their budget with the number 1 response being that they feel it is the best platform to target their ideal customer.
35% plan on maintaining their LinkedIn ad spend with the main reason being that it is working but they aren’t able to scale due to a lack of inventory for their target demographic.
And 8% plan on decreasing their LinkedIn ad spend with the primary response being due to their company slowing down for economic reasons.
Now I wanted to save the most interesting one for last, which is Twitter. I didn’t actually expect these results… and you’ll see why…
28% of companies plan on increasing their Twitter ad spend. The number one response on why was they feel there is an opportunity to acquire customers for less on the platform due to companies pulling out after Elon bought them.
And 34% plan on decreasing their ad spend. When asked why the main response was they don’t agree with how Elon Musk is running the platform and the changes he has been making.
