Our world around us is increasingly becoming more and more online focused. Whether you’re a fan or not, modern living is revolved around a good wi-fi connection and a nice phone in your pocket. Instead of reading a newspaper we use Twitter for our news, rather than going to the shops we can now do our whole shop online and get it delivered to our door the next day, we no longer buy CDs we stream music on Spotify/Apple Music/whatever the next Jay Z project might be. This opens a huge opportunity to anyone wanting to promote absolutely anything to their target market, as improved technology means better targeting and better reporting. In this blog I’m going to cover the key facts that tell the story…

£8.606 billion spent on Digital Marketing in 2015 (IAB)

The video above is actually from 2014, but is a brilliant overview by the IAB giving some key insights into what’s happened in the advertising industry over the last 10-12 years. Whilst traditional advertising spends have stagnated, with the exception of possibly television, digital marketing has accelerated enormously from £825 million spend in 2000, to £8.6 billion spend in 2015. The rise in mobile technology and social media has been a huge catalyst for this increase. Digital marketing has limitless opportunities for improvements and will gain new ways in which we can reach out to target markets in ways we currently can’t even imagine! If you’ve not fully embraced the potential that digital marketing offers, and how you can get ahead of your competitors with well targeted campaigns, it’s still not too late!

Spending on print newspapers ads decreased by 11% in 2016 (Statista)

Slowly but surely becoming less of an everyday item, the British obsession with a daily newspaper is dwindling. We only have so much time to consume information in one day, and now news websites and social media apps are beginning to overtake classic paper based newspapers. So how does this affect our marketing spend? In my opinion, unless it links to a solid online strategy, newspaper display print ads are not only expensive but a comparatively ineffective way of trying to communicate your message to your target audience. Newspapers are read by a huge demographic, spanning multiple age groups and classes. Compare this to Facebook advertising where you can pin point specific locations, likes/interests, male/female, age etc there really is no comparison when comparing like for like marketing spend.

The average person spent 2 hours 59 minutes online per day in 2015 (IAB & Pwc)

Yep, you read it correctly. On average each of us spends just under 3 hours online per day. 3… hours…. That sounds ridiculous. But is a true indication of how our phones and technology are a huge part of our lives. When you think that most of our apps and websites now have sponsored stories or advertisements, that offers a huge amount of time to reach out to people. Given that the majority of people spend a considerable amount of their time on a device each day, timing is really important. Take email marketing as an example, if you’re a local accountant you’d want to send out a business related newsletter mid week first thing just before the general 9-5’ers get into their office. On the other hand, if you’re selling clothes you’d look to push emails out at lunch time or after work.

51% of all digital marketing spend is on Paid-for search listings (IAB & Pwc)

This equates to £4,355 million spent in 2015 in the UK, with the majority of that going on Google’s Adwords format. It’s too obvious to state Google’s importance in the rise of the internet over the last 15 years, but Google’s Adwords platform is currently the best way to display for particular keywords on Google. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO for short!) in our opinion is becoming a dying art, with other factors such as social media activity and regular interesting website content becoming far greater factors in your search rankings. Saying that, technical and basic optimisation work from an agency like ourselves can make a really big difference in your overall rankings, and it’s important to focus on the right keywords that will get you the right/most traffic. Aside from organic listings, Adwords is the best way of guaranteeing you results and can be tracked to the point of enquiry or sale. Google has manufactured the way its search engine functions to accommodate its advertising platform more effectively over the past few years, also annoyingly removing some cool features for agencies to get better organic rankings. Whether you like it or not, Google’s Adwords platform will remain a cornerstone of digital marketing strategy in years to come.

It’s clear to see the impact that the internet has had over marketing over the last few years, but that doesn’t mean that traditional advertising is dead. From our point of view TV, Radio, Print Advertising and other traditional forms of marketing/advertising will add significant value to a marketing strategy with bigger budgets. However, this should all be built around a core digital strategy so the success and failures of specific campaigns can be measured, utilising digital marketing’s strengths at all times.