ONE IN FIVE Irish marketing executives spend most of their budget online, according to the 2012 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey, published by AMAS and the Marketing Institute of Ireland (MII).

The online survey, which had 348 responses, was carried out in April and May 2012.

It indicates that while 75 per cent of marketeers say social media has allowed them to understand their audience more, 70 per cent say it has increased their work load.

Email campaigns remains an important part of marketing strategies with 67 per cent of respondents saying they use them for their business.

Social networking and blogs is the second most popular online format at 63 per cent, while search engine optimisation is also popular at 57 per cent.

Over 74 per cent of respondents said that online marketing was good for customer engagement while 63 per cent said it was value for money. Newspaper advertising was not used by 28 per cent of the respondents while 50 per cent did not use radio marketing either.

The use of social media sites for marketing has risen with 70 per cent of the companies now using Facebook. Respondents in the 80 percentile said that social media sites are used for building relationships with audiences and building brand awareness.

Twitter and LinkedIn were both popular at 61 per cent while 44 per cent said they used YouTube.

Fiachra Ó Marcaigh, an AMAS director told TheJournal.ie:

This is a continuation and acceleration of trends we have seen in recent years. Marketers are moving their budgets online in the Irish market as they have been doing in the UK, US and elsewhere. Of course this reflects the media habits of their audiences, particularly younger people, for whom social networking and online games are a substitute for traditional media, such as TV time.

He added that by switching spend to digital, marketers are reflecting the reality of the new media landscape.

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