Report: Four Out of Five Marketers Plan to Increase Digital Media Spending in 2014

With technology evolving to the point where you can’t walk down the street without someone looking at a tablet or smartphone, it makes perfect sense that four out of five marketers plan to increase their spending on digital media in 2014—a chunk of which will undoubtedly go toward social media—an increase of 13 percent from the previous year. Additionally, marketers said that spending on television, billboards, radio, direct mail and print will remain flat.

According to a recent study by IDG Connect, social media will become the most important tool to be used to educate IT buyers within two years, increasing to boast 37 percent of the weight of influencing investment decisions while editorial content will drop to 31 percent. Because of the power social media has to spread content organically and quickly, and the fact that many people have Internet-connected mobile devices on their persons at all times, it appears the aforementioned marketers have their fingers on the pulse of where advertising is going.

With this in mind, marketers who are not planning to increase their spending on digital media are putting themselves at a significant disadvantage. As more and more consumers flock toward social media platforms and digest their content digitally—and traditional publications like newspapers and magazines continuing losing readership—marketers would be wise to position themselves and their brands in the space that is undoubtedly the future.

The more digital media that is produced and disseminated to your audience, the more engagement will occur. Such engagement helps build a mutually beneficial relationship while growing brand awareness along the way. Developing and bolstering widespread brand awareness is integral to establishing yourself as thought leaders in your respective space—something that will undoubtedly you’re your company’s bottom line.

A new year brings new changes with it. Building off that momentum, forward-thinking marketers should use a fresh calendar as an opportunity to revamp their strategies and keep an eye toward the future as they craft their campaigns. By choosing to heavily invest in digital media, marketers expose themselves to throngs of consumers hungry for content, and by doing so, help ensure their brands grow.