• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, March 14, 2012

Global marketing budgets are shifting to emerging markets. While the U.S. remains an important influence, other regions are increasingly gaining recognition as centers of excellence for various marketing disciplines.

That’s according to a new survey from the World Federation of Advertisers, (WFA) which reports that 60% of global marketers are shifting budgets to focus on new markets for growth. Nearly 95% of those polled in the survey believe future growth will come from outside the U.S.

While the U.S. remains a key influencer of marketing trends, nearly three-quarters of the respondents said that marketing best practices are increasingly found outside the U.S. The survey polled 65 marketers, all members of the WFA, representing nearly $40 billion in global ad spending.

According to the findings, the U.S. remains the go-to market for best practices in social media strategies. But in other areas of marketing, a wide range of different countries are now also considered centers of excellence. 

Case in point: mobile marketing. Asian countries, including Korea, Japan and China, lead the way. In the integrated marketing space, the U.S. is just one of a number of regions where best practices abound, including the UK, Continental Europe and Australia. The survey found a similar view pertaining to creative advertising where many European markets are seen as standouts.

WFA also reported that global marketers were critical of the amount of attention that American marketers give to what happens beyond their shores. While nearly 90% of marketers outside the U.S. pay attention to what’s going on stateside, just 11% of those surveyed said they believed U.S. marketers pay enough attention to what goes on in the rest of the world.

The release of the survey was timed to Wednesday’s Global Marketing Conference in New York, which this year is a joint effort of the WFA and the Association of National Advertisers.