Companies in the industrial sector are spending more on marketing and allocating a greater portion of their budgets to online marketing, according to the 2007 Industrial Marketing Trends Survey from GlobalSpec, which surveyed marketing and sales executives and managers in the sector, MarketingCharts reports.

More than half - 55 percent - of respondents said their companies would spend more on marketing in 2007 than in 2006; only 10 percent said they would spend less.

Other findings from the 2007 GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends Survey:

• 61 percent of respondents said online marketing would take up more of their marketing budget in 2007 than it did in 2006; only 5 percent said they would spend less online.
• 37 percent said they would spend at least one-third of their marketing budget online.
• Social media has yet to make an impact in the industrial sector: Fewer than 10 percent of respondents expected to increase spending on blogs and podcasts in 2007

Previous GlobalSpec surveys found that 91 percent of engineers use the internet to find components and suppliers, and 45 percent spend more than six hours/week online for work-related purposes.

MarketingCharts has some more info here.