BrandSpark has released its ninth annual marketer survey, measuring plans and industry perception for 2014.

Marketers seem to see themselves as innovators: 39% believe they consistently develop new products before the competition, while 35% “quickly follow” new product trends. Roughly 10% don’t believe they innovate at all, while 11% consider themselves laggards in the innovation space. More than 75% of marketers plan to roll out a new product, while 83% plan to improve an existing product in the next year.

When it comes to their personal shopping habits, almost 20% of marketers want to be first to try a new product among their friends, while 39% enjoy trying new products. Interestingly, only 9% of marketers think brand-name products mean quality, while 17% prefer to purchase brand-name products than store brands.

One-quarter of marketers are optimistic the current business environment will improve over the next six months, down from 30% in 2013, while roughly 60% of marketers think it will stay about the same.

When it comes to upcoming strategy, social marketing is still at the top of the planned strategy food chain, with 88% of marketers planning to implement a social marketing strategy this year. Mobile continues to be a hot topic, with 67% planning to roll out on that platform.

Among those looking to develop a mobile strategy, mobile display ads are most likely to dominate (66%), while social media ads on mobile (55%), mobile apps (53%), mobile advertising (51%) and paid mobile search (45%) aren’t far behind.

And despite frequent claims of its demise, 20% of marketers still plan to use QR codes in the next year for their mobile strategy.

Digital marketing also takes the lion’s share of planned brand strategy, with 87% saying they will unveil a digital campaign, down from 90% in 2013.

The clear majority of marketers (94%) plan to roll out changed or new packaging in 2014 as part of their brand strategy, up from 87% in 2013.

When it comes to media spend, marketers plan to spend more money on online video (48% plan to increase the share of budget), social marketing (48%) and mobile (41%). It looks like legacy media will still face struggles ahead, as more marketers plan to decrease or cut their budgets for those media altogether: newspapers will likely take the biggest hit with 28% planning to cut their budgets, and 44% not planning to place any newspaper ads whatsoever. Magazines follow with 21% planning to cut and 35% steering clear, while TV will potentially see a 14% decrease in budget share, with 49% of brands planning to skip TV ads altogether.

Despite the positive trend towards digital (with more brands including mobile, digital and social in their strategic plans and increasing budgets), these channels are still seen as having lower ROI. Social marketing is only seen to have strong ROI among 19% of marketers, while 13% consider digital display ads as good channels for return on investment. Mobile sits at 10%, while online video sits at 18%.

Marketers sill love couponing, with 36% claiming it serves as the channel with the strongest ROI. Shopper marketing follows closely behind at 29%.

Sadly, newspapers, radio and magazines all sit below 5% on return on investment.

More than 350 Canadian marketers participated in the survey.

Image via Shutterstock.