Irish marketers spend more online

budgets online, while 8% spend more than three-quarters of their budgets on Internet marketing, according to the 2012 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey, Irish Times.com writes.

The survey of 347 marketers, published by Internet research consultants AMAS and the Marketing Institute of Ireland, found that almost six in 10 marketers say online marketing offers a greater return on investment than other media.

E-mail campaigns were used by 67% of those surveyed, followed by social networking and blogs by 63% and search engine optimisation by 57%.

Some 70% of the companies used Facebook while Twitter and LinkedIn were both at 61%, and 44% used YouTube, says The Daily Business Post.

“The survey found that the top reasons that marketers are using social media are to build brand awareness and build relationships with audiences,” says Fiachra 'O Marcaigh of AMAS. “Used properly, social media has immense potential as a relatively low-cost marketing tool.”

“The marketing mix is also increasingly mobile,” says Tom Trainor of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. “More than one-third of the companies said they used mobile Web sites for marketing, 30% used QR codes and 25% used apps.”