According to an Outsell study conducted during the first quarter of this year, small B2B marketers are continuing to increase their online marketing efforts even during the recession. While B2C marketers have been cutting budgets across the board, B2B marketers have been more surgical, even selecting some areas to increase spending. The study found that 26% of small B2B marketers are actually planning to increase their overall spending slightly through 2009 while 60% of large B2B marketers are at least keeping spending steady, if not increasing slightly.
Smaller B2B companies are focusing much of their increases in marketing dollars for 2009 online. Keyword buys, display ads on industry sites, email campaigns and webinars are all areas where small B2B companies are planning at least a 10% increase in spending. Larger B2B companies are at least holding steady in these areas, with an average increase over last year’s spending of about .5%.
Smart marketing spending is the goal this year, and B2B marketers have realized that may mean increasing budgets while the competition cuts back, and it definitely means committing more of the budget to the high-return, traceable world of online marketing.