Manufacturers Will Raise Online Budgets: Survey

More than 75% of manufacturing companies will increase their online marketing budgets in 2006, according to a survey from SVM E-Business Solutions.

The 2006 E-Business Trends in Manufacturing Report also found that:

* Industrial marketers are increasing spending on Web sites, search engine marketing and e mail marketing, while decreasing spending on magazine advertisements, trade shows and direct mail

. * The Web is increasingly becoming the hub of manufacturers’ marketing efforts with more than half of all respondents considering their Web sites their most powerful marketing tool.

* About half of the respondents said they were engaged in some form of search engine marketing in 2005, and this will increase significantly in 2006.

* Industrial marketers feel online marketing is more effective at producing measurable, business-building, results.

The study surveyed more than 220 marketing executives at US manufacturing firms.