Digital marketing is any form of marketing that relies on electronic media, and like any other operation within a business, it requires a budget.  Recently, digital marketing budgets have been on the rise as the popularity of social media becomes more adapted as a form of outreach.  One important question that business owners ask is how to appropriately value digital marketing in order to configure a proper investment amount. 

            Gartner is a Tech. Research company and they have recently done a survey to measure what companies are spending on digital marketing, and their results indicate that digital marketing budgets total about 2.5% of annual revenues. 

This chart is a good example you could use as a proxy for your budget depending on your industry. 

            In addition to this data on digital marketing, Gartner also looked into overall marketing budgets – digital, tradition, and offline.  They found that marketers were spending a total of 10.4% of their annual revenues on marketing in general, with digital marketing accounting for the aforementioned 2.5%.  Digital shares of the overall marketing budget are on the rise, and expected to increase by 9% this year.  Overall spending on marketing is only expected to rise 6% this year. 

            The fact that digital’s growing piece of the marketing pie is a reflection of shifts in consumer behavior and spending, and the increasing importance companies are placing on the online realm, both in terms of generating results and cost efficiency.