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It’s budgeting time in corporate America, and given the flow of money into the digital marketing space, marketing managers are dealing with a new set of strategic questions about online’s role in the marketing mix. ClickZ columnist Mark Kingdon offers up key questions for marketing executives to consider when mapping out 2007 budgets.

It’s one thing to take last year’s budget and add 5%; it’s another to understand all the digital touchpoints that make up the customer experience before determining strategies, tactics and budgets, according to Kingdon.

Now, online budgets are getting bigger, and are getting more attention at the top levels of management. Instead of focusing on how much budget allocation a certain tactic or channel should get, Kingdon argues that marketing execs need to address broader strategic marketing issues to help inform the 2007 budget process:

Is the way consumers use digital media to make purchase decisions for our product changing?
?
Should our digital initiatives be more tightly integrated with our offline initiatives? Are there benefits to that? ?

Our natural search results are improving so we have more unpaid traffic. Does this mean we can reduce spending on paid search? ?

Should I focus on site enhancements or redirect my online ad spend???

Where should we place our bets in 2007?

Sharpen those pencils or fire up the Excel worksheets. It’s time to plan the plan.