Australian brands invest more in digital marketing than many of their counterparts in the Asia Pacific region including Singapore and South Korea.
Participants in the Adobe/CMO Council study, The Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard 2012, said they spend 25% of their total marketing budget on digital investments. This is compared to 24% in both China and Singapore, and 20% in India and South Korea. Hong Kong outspent Australia at 28%.
Website content development and performance optimisation led where digital investment was being driven at 83%, followed by SEO at 66% and email marketing at 54%.
Priorities for the current financial year were social media optimisation at 50% and improving paid search and online display ads at 43%.
Australia outperformed the region in use of digital marketing analytics at 84.5%, compared to South Korea at 84%, Singapore at 75%, India at 63% and Hong Kong at 61.5%. China was significantly behind at 31%.
Metrics being used by Australian marketers to measure data included traffic and traffic sources at 76.5%, click-through-rates at 74%, response rates at 72% and conversion rates at 64%.
Adobe senior director of marketing, Asia Pacific Mark Phibbs said: “The research shows that companies across Asia Pacific understand the value of investing in digital marketing but are struggling with low budgets. Australia has realised the benefits of digital early compared with the rest of the region and has invested accordingly.
“Optimism is high right across the region about the business benefits of digital marketing with 93% of marketers surveyed believing digital marketing could create competitive advantage for their company, while 52% felt digital marketing was crucial in helping create a customer-centric, responsive organisation.
“The data has highlighted significant gaps between countries in their use of digital marketing analytics and reporting technologies. We can expect to see countries with the budget and skills to invest in establishing sophisticated technology platforms surge ahead of countries that are struggling to set up similar infrastructure.”
Across the region, budget limitations was nominated as the number one challenge to executing digital campaigns while a lack of the right talent, skills and expertise among team members was the top challenge to building an in-house digital marketing team.
Of the 295 respondents to the survey, 79 were Australian marketers representing companies such as Toyota, 20th Century Fox and Macquarie Private Wealth.
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