THE head of research at the Chartered Institute of Marketing has said that companies will spend more money advertising online in the future.
Mark Blayney Stuart was speaking on the future of digital marketing at an event organised by the Isle of Man branch of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
He said: "More people are investing in online marketing now. The online spend will overtake offline spend in the next three years as increasingly there will be a shift in budgets to online marketing rather than offline."
Marketeers from a number of companies across the Island attended the event which was held at the Sefton Hotel today (Wednesday).
Mark explained that it was important that companies used the internet to target their potential audiences.
He said: "Our experience is that people don't actually go 'surfing' the internet. We all stick mainly to seven or eight sites that we are familiar with and trust. We want to know we will be familiar with the site when we get there.
"The key to the future to inhabit the spaces that people are already in. If you can reach people where they are already you have a much better chance of success and driving people towards you."
A number of examples of successful online marketing were highlighted including Sainsbury's who used Yahoo Answers to communicate with potential customers and the Cadbury's gorilla advert which was copied by numerous people who made their own versions online.
One of the main benefits of marketing online is the fact that the response can be measured, however Mark said it was important that companies did not become hung up on this.
He explained: "One of the problems with the fact that you can measure absolutely everything means you start to get mesmerized by the measurements and you can actually take it too far.
"We've seen plenty of companies who would have no problem in running a print, radio or TV campaign where they can't really measure very accurately what the perceptions of that are.
"It's almost as if when companies put a campaign onto the internet, because you can measure it – it's 'we've got to'. Then if the measurement doesn't seem to meet their expectations the campaign can get dropped - well I think that there are lots of other really valid reasons for staying on the internet."
The Chartered Institute of Marketing event was sponsored by isleofman.com - the Island's most popular website as ranked by Alexa.com. To discuss your marketing requirements with isleofman.com please telephone 01624 641555.
Photograph by Tessa Hawley: L to R - Diane Earles, CIM regional director - North of England, Mark Blayney Stuart, head of research at the CIM, Cathy Cowin, Chair of the Isle of Man CIM, Gavin Smith, vice chair of the Isle of Man CIM and general manager at isleofman.com and David Le Prevost, managing director of isleofman.com.
