(c)iStock.com/Todor Tsvetkov
A good deal of ink (or pixels, really) is dedicated to the ways that marketing organisations are evolving. We’re told that the CMO has a seat at the CEO’s desk, and marketing tentacles now reach into every nook and cranny of this enterprise.
Marketing organisations are made of creative types.
What is driving this evolution? Can the electronic revolution take credit?
GumGum researched 240 marketing executives of Fortune 500 brands, to discover. In some ways, their responses are predictable; in other ways they have been anything but.
Why is an organisation amazing?
The first thing, what makes a promotion organisation great? Unsurprisingly, customer (85%) and data-centricity (66%) topped the list.
The digital revolution has upped the match while the client has been critical to the brand. Brands could make a decision as to what users needed, and they commanded the conversation via advertising that is one-way.
That equation was obliterated by Social media, however, any brand worth its salt knows that the customer is in the driver’s seat.
Of course, listening to the client has its advantages: Consumers are more than willing to talk about their priorities through social networking and other stations. Smart brands can use that insight to notify advertising strategies and their product roadmap.
Data is critical for this effort, so it is no surprise that marketers are now obsessed with bytes and bits.
Slightly over half (57%) say that good advertising organisations are “digital” This is a percentage that is surprisingly low, given all that’s said on the subject by the pundit class.
Approximately one in 10 of those surveyed cited organisational inertia as a key point for concern
By way of example, the most recent Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK digital ad spend report emphasized a 16.4% year-on-year rise in digital advertising spend, equating to a listing #8.61bn, out doing TV advertising.
It’s interesting to note that although organisational flexibility ranked relatively large as a potential feature to greatness (43 percent), both technology know-how and media attention felt very low.
These numbers might be somewhat misleading. Tech decisions are left so marketers may not consider them important drivers of change, as mentioned below.
As for media focus, which has been marketing’s specialty, something where they excel.
Trends of their future
GumGum requested that the entrepreneurs to rank tendencies they believed will have the greatest impact on their organisations. Innovation initiatives (68%), measurement and analytics (65%), mobile initiatives (64%), and articles advertising (64 percent) were viewed as having the best effect.
The simple fact that content marketing ranked fourth is a bit of a surprise, given that the role it plays in consumer participation, and the rise in the visual net, which taps into the client’s willingness to serve as a brand’s ambassador, as Apple’s Shot on a iPhone campaign obviously attests.
Technology
Technologies problems, such as infrastructure investments (55 percent) and marketing automation (54%), are ranked as a second tier of trends that will influence a marketer’s life on a daily basis. Is that a surprise or not? How do marketing automation maybe not top the record?
The low ranking of savviness could possibly be an indication that although some technology knowledge is a requirement for promotion organisations today, marketers don’t see their businesses as driving and driving technology decision-making.
Nevertheless, not every respondent agreed that technology is important. As one CMO we talked to noted: “It would be a shame if a creative individual now didn’t understand the ins and outs of technology or even electronic advertisements or even how businesses are thinking about technologies as part of the organisation, and whether that is a key for scale.”
Bread and butter marketing
Essential advertising practices like advertising, paid media, and societal media optimisation were predicted to have a less equal or more effect.
Perhaps focus on consumer-centric advertising, coupled with a more fluid organizational approach to marketing, is pushing marketers farther from the “conventional” focus on paid, possessed, and earned press groupings.
Bumps in the road
Obviously, none of these trends that are future are without struggles. When participants were asked to expect the largest roadblocks to optimum performance, altering corporate priorities (34 percent) and budget challenges (22%) emerged as the best picks.
Most marketers (87 percent) seem to be more or less comfortable with all the shaky nature of the marketing arena for the foreseeable future and do not see this as a significant roadblock to success. Roughly one in 10 of those surveyed cited organisational inertia as a point for concern.
So what do these trends all mean for marketers as they look into the future?
GumGum requested respondents to pick 1 word or phrase which best describes the advertising firm of tomorrow, to get a sense. Unsurprisingly, respondents described an organisation that’s highly adaptive and vibrant.
Some of the frequent responses were “lively,” “nimble,” “fluid,” and “innovative.”
All of these descriptors point to a future that, in which marketers leverage technology which allows them respond at unprecedented speeds, and to monitor consumer sentiment.
