Great Outlook for Interactive Marketing

Forrester recently released their “US Interactive Marketing Forecast” for 2009-2014, and the outlook is good.

Forrester is predicting that interactive marketing (including email marketing, social media and mobile) will become a more significant part of the overall marketing mix in the coming years, which is expected to grow to an impressive $55 billion by 2014, and to increase from 12 percent of the overall marketing spend to 21 percent.

Over the next several years, mobile marketing is expected to grow by 27 percent and social media by 34 percent. Social media has the steepest expected growth as marketers continue to try and keep up with the consumers increased use of social networking sites, which has surpassed email as the primary source of communication in 2009, according to Nielsen Online.

The increase in mobile data usage, continued development of mobile applications and mobile maturing as a marketing medium all will attribute to mobile’s growth.

Forecast: US Interactive Marketing Spend, 2009 to 2014

Although Email marketing had the smallest expected growth, this can be attributed to the already high adoption. The report found that marketers will continue to utilize email as a tool, with 97 percent of marketers planning on using/continuing to use email marketing in 2010.

It’s imperative that every company is asking themselves how they plan on utilizing interactive marketing over the next 5 years. And, with nearly every print publication feeling crunched and the “TIVO” phenomenon taking a bite out of TV advertising, do we really think only 21% of these budgets will be allocated to interactive?

I am going to go out on a limb here and say significantly more budget will shift into these incredibly cost-effective and measurable direct marketing mediums. My number is 30%…