Singapore firms reveal healthy year-on-year marketing budgets
Singapore companies are showing willingness to increase marketing campaign costs, with almost half having increased their marketing budgets for 2010 from the previous year.
According to a new survey, more than three quarters of the respondents indicated that their marketing budgets had increased (44 %) or stayed the same (32%) compared to 2009.
The research also found that more Singapore firms are using social media as part of their marketing strategies. Almost half (45%) of respondents said that they have allocated a greater proportion of their marketing budgets towards new marketing channels such as social media, social networking and interactive digital media.
This is not to the detriment of more traditional uses of online marketing tools: the majority (90%) of Singapore companies continue to use their web presence primarily as a means of informing users and providing company information.
However, a sizeable 71% of respondents are now using online channels to actively generate leads.
It appears that many Singapore marketers are employing online technology for marketing in more sophisticated ways. A significant number (35%) use social media to ‘generate new leads, establish a thought leadership position (29%) and engage customers (28%), according to the report on Asiaone.com.
These numbers increased when marketers were asked to forecast how they would use social media within the next six to 12 months. In this instance, 58% would use social media to generate leads, 54% to engage customers, and 34% to establish a thought leadership position.
The lynchpins of companies’ social marketing strategies are Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs, with 43%, 35% and 35% of respondents reporting that they are active on these platforms respectively.
The majority (70%) of respondents manage their social media activities in-house (through their marketing team, IT support team or other internal resource) with only
12% currently outsourcing social media marketing to an external agency, and the remaining 18% managing it on an ad-hoc basis.
While social media marketing may be rising up the agenda, it appears that traditional marketing is still the cornerstone of Singapore marketing strategy, as 35% of respondents claimed to have no presence in the social media space at all.
Research was conducted by the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) and GetIT Comms.
Tags: global marketing
