What to do and what to spend on Digital Marketing

Our recommendations based on the Five Gartner findings.

• Make a dramatic shift in your marketing budget allocation from offline to online marketing and use the 2.5% as a good average benchmark. That will result in a budget of $25,000 for each $1M of revenue. Take some risks here.
• Ensure that your external partners have the marketing chops to adapt to the evolving landscape. Marketing has always been an art and a science, but the growth in underlying technology requires business owners to have access to technology talent.
• Align your organizational goals of attracting, acquiring and retaining customers across the many digital channels with current and future technology landscape.
• Take any savings from your offline marketing activities straight in to digital marketing activities, reinvest those funds into more of what's working well.
• Take a fresh look at your corporate website and online advertising activities such as search engine marketing — don't let either run on autopilot. Both require significant investments in content creation, management and technology. Both were cited as the most important digital marketing activity to marketing's success.
• Create social media awareness of your competencies, products and services. Second most important investment in the digital marketing mix.
• Test how and what offerings can be sold via your company's E-commerce experience and determine how you'll drive buyers there.
• Rely on agencies and other marketing service providers when you lack specialized expertise such as mobile web development .