When developing your budget for Internet Marketing, choosing in which strategies to invest may be your biggest challenge. Depending on your business model and target audience, determining how marketing dollars should be allocated to multiple tactics can become overwhelming. According to the State of Digital Marketing report organized by Wedmarketing123,  SEO, Social Media, and PPC Advertising received the most attention from B2B and B2C models.

SEO is still the ultimate lead generator

Search Engine Optimization, typically the foundation of any online marketing campaign, was cited by most respondents to have the greatest impact in lead generation. In comparison, Pay-Per-Click Advertising and Social Media Marketing were number two and three respectively. This is no surprise considering website traffic was the most favoured indicator of digital marketing success by both B2C and B2B companies.

PPC vs. SEO – which dominates marketing budgets?

In terms of allocating the majority of their budgets to a specific strategy, the results seem to differ between SEO and PPC. 42.5% of B2C respondents indicated that a significant portion of their budgets went to PPC, whereas the leading investment amongst B2B respondents was SEO with 33% of respondents. This is not surprising considering generating leads and sales for consumer goods is more effective with PPC considering users are in more of a “buy-now” mode.

Social Media Marketing on the rise

Looking towards the future, it seems as if Internet marketing spending will be on the rise: only 3.6% of respondents indicated they would decrease their budget on SEO, 9.3% on PPC, and 4.1% on Social Media. On the flip side, over 60% of respondents stated that they plan to increase their total spend on Social Media Marketing, which is most likely derived from the 55% of respondents who indicated that it helped them generate sales. In addition, increasing your spend on social is necessary with social signals playing a larger role in SERPs.

How do these results affect your Online Marketing planning? 

Continuing to invest resources into SEO and PPC is imperative to dominating search engines and increasing your Social Media efforts across platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is necessary for both branding and establishing credibility. When determining what to spend on Online Marketing for future campaigns, make sure you incorporate all three components in your overall strategy; otherwise, your business may not survive in an increasingly competitive digital environment.