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CMO Council

66% of marketers ‘lack confidence’ in ability to achieve revenue goals
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Research has highlighted the importance of data/analytics for marketers working to protect budgets and prove ROI in 2023.

A study conducted by Sprinklr and the CMO Council, Outsmart Adversity: Weathering Economic Headwinds and Emerging Poised for Growth, found that 2 in 3 marketing leaders lack confidence in their ability to achieve goals in the face of economic adversity and uncertainty.

Nearly 8 in 10 express concerns around lack of investment or budget cuts. Challenges with executing data-driven marketing strategies contribute to this lack of confidence.  

The report surveyed nearly 500 global marketing leaders to reveal key findings about how marketers feel about economic adversity, and how they can achieve revenue goals.  

Key findings include:  

  • 78% of marketers don’t strongly feel that they can convince the CFO to invest in marketing and not cut the budget. 
  • Facing budget challenges, a majority (68%) strongly agree that it’s imperative for CMOs and CIOs to collaborate this year to develop a competitive advantage with customer experience.  
  • However, even among highly confident marketers surveyed, only 32% are very satisfied in their ability to leverage data/analytics. Among less confident marketers, this falls to 10%. 
  • Internal collaboration and maximising ROI across marketing channels will be key to success. In the next 12 months, most marketers plan to create omnichannel customer experiences to help them emerge from economic uncertainty.  

“Marketers will have to build alliances with finance and IT to protect budgets and MarTech investments, and they’ll need to identify and shore up capabilities to build their confidence,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “These capabilities include gathering real-time insights that reveal how audiences really feel about your marketing on multiple channels, and then easily distributing this knowledge throughout the organisation.”

“In uncertain times, marketers face even more pressure to protect budgets and programs by demonstrating clear ROI,” said Arun Pattabhiraman, Chief MarketingOfficer, Sprinklr. “As our research with the CMO Council shows, marketers must embrace the opportunity to enhance the way they gather data, identify actionable consumer insights, and strengthen their engagement strategy across channels.”

70 percent of marketers expect to boost spend in 2021
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Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed by the CMO Council say they will boost marketing spend in the coming year and most don’t expect to downsize or re-structure their organisations.

While many industry sectors have struggled in the past year, it appears most marketers have already done all the cutting, pruning and restructuring of budgets and teams in 2020, notes the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. 

The organization has 16,000 members in 10,000 companies across more than 110 countries worldwide. Members collectively control nearly $1 trillion of annual marketing spend.

Key indicators of a positive outlook come from a year-end “Getting It Done in 2021” audit of around 200 CMO Council members across all regions worldwide. Key findings reveal:

  • A surprising 65 percent will increase marketing spend in 2021; just 10 percent will reduce their budgets, while 24 percent expect no change
  • A large percentage of marketers (70 percent) report significant or growing investments in marketing technology to improve effectiveness
  • Most important areas of marketing automation and transformation will be sourcing and using customer data insights, executing campaigns more effectively, as well as improving operations and performance 
  • Just a quarter of marketing leaders say they will downsize or re-structure their marketing organizations in 2021, in contrast to 64 percent who will not
  • Working more effectively with lines of business is the number one priority for marketing leaders, who are also keen to lower cost, increase efficiency and do a better job of both globalizing and localizing campaigns
  • Over half of marketers surveyed want to optimize their customer journey, and more than a  third want to boost acquisition and conversion rates through better data-driven interaction and digital innovation
  • Interestingly, across company sizes, regions and industries, priorities remained consistent: marketers are looking to increase spend and automate; likewise they are looking to save costs through efficiencies rather than through staff cuts

“The most relevant and compelling areas of conversation among our members right now are all about ROI, efficiency and revenue optimization,” said Manuel Hüttl, Senior Vice President Europe beim CMO Council.” This means being more focused on digital marketing transformation, creating value from customer data, and upgrading customer engagement and experience.” 

The online survey was fielded in December and early January and a summary report and infographics can be downloaded at https://cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/getting-it-done-in-2021.

Coronavirus: ‘Content marketing imperative grows’
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Many marketing organisations lack the necessary capabilities and processes to keep pace with a growing content marketing imperative amid the coronavirus outbreak, according to new strategic report from the CMO Council.

Cleary, the impact of COVID-19 on face-to-face business interactions, particularly large gatherings, has been swift and pervasive.

Content will need to pick up the slack, according to Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of CMO Council and author of the strategic brief, Making Content Marketing Convert.

“Marketers must act quickly and decisively to increase the impact, scope, reach and return of their content marketing investments in 2020,” said Manuel Hüttl, Senior Vice President Europe beim CMO Council. “Our research also shows there is a critical need for marketing organizations to bring more discipline and strategic thinking to content specification, delivery and analytics.”

Developed in partnership with NetLine the report provides insights into the problems marketing organisations face in elevating the business impact of content development, distribution and lead conversion. It also provides a concise set best practices, along with a self-assessment check list for lead performance improvement.

Among CMO Council research insights that underscore the problems and shortcomings in current content marketing initiatives:

  • Only 12 percent of marketers believe their content marketing programs targets the right audiences with relevant and persuasive content.
  • Only 21 percent say they are sufficiently partnered with their sales counterparts in developing and measuring demand generation programs.
  • Most view their content marketing process as ad hoc, decentralized and driven by internal stakeholder, rather than customer, interests.
  • While 88 percent of business buyers say online content impacts vendor selection, just nine percent think of vendors as trusted sources of content.

The report offers commentary and advice on the top 10 essentials for effective authority leadership-driven content marketing:

  1. Partner with credible + trusted sources
  2. Produce relevant + compelling strategic insights
  3. Add customer-contributed views + validation
  4. Present authoritative, newsworthy and enriched content
  5. Engage qualified, verified and predisposed audiences
  6. Target the whole influencer, specifier + buyer ecosystem
  7. Embrace multi-channel distribution, promotion + syndication
  8. Authenticate content consumption and buyer engagement
  9. Ensure lead legitimacy and compliance 
  10. Cultivate, Activate and convert prospect flow

It also offers a set of best practices for lead lifecycle management. These practices cover:

  • Functional alignment between marketing and sales
  • Lead qualification—prioritization and scoring
  • Lead nurturing and relationship development
  • Hand-off and optimization of the conversion process
  • Campaign measurement

Download the report here.

Industry Spotlight: The new rules of shopper marketing engagement…
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Today’s marketplace is a networked dialogue of information sharing between businesses and consumers. The more effectively information is shared across these functions, the better the relationship between all of the members. While consumers are increasingly comfortable with marketers using their personal data for targeted advertising that is relevant to them, marketers are still struggling to deliver the timely, personal customer experience that consumers are longing for.

According to Bazaarvoice and CMO Council’s Shopper Marketing: The New Rules of Engagement survey, marketers across brands and retailers are guilty of continually missing out on opportunities to influence and engage buyers as they shop. This awareness is positive, but what exactly are the most common mistakes marketers continue to make as they attempt to provide a more bespoke customer experience?

While 90 per cent of marketers say that access to real-time customer sentiment and shopping behavior is critical, less than 10 per cent are able to tie their content efforts directly to customer shopping behaviour. Furthermore, data strategies are often short-sighted, with 83 per cent of marketers admitting that they are unable to see beyond their own brand properties. This limited access to first-party customer data across the broader retail ecosystem, means nearly half questioned the accuracy of the customer data they were actually working with.

Conversely, 47 per cent  of consumers point to reviews, social media posts and past purchases as the best places for marketers to gather insights about them, indicating the value of identifying and reaching in-market shoppers based on their consumer-generated content (CGC) and shopping behaviour. In fact, consumers trust peer-to-peer opinions three times more than brand content, highlighting the clear opportunities when investing in a CGC strategy.

Marketers need to not only ask themselves if they have the right content to appeal to consumers along the various stages of the buying journey, but also which components are required to create successful customer engagement too.

Shop Direct, the UK multi-brand retailer ran 100 AB testing experiments in one month, comparing different versions of the website to see which one performed better. As part of this, they removed 50 per cent of reviews from their website, which impacted conversion globally by 1.7 per cent, showcasing the importance of online reviews.

The most powerful multi-channel marketing strategies are geared towards understanding the customers’ needs and building loyalty through effective customer communications, regardless of the business size. As expectations increase, customers are increasingly showing that if they are not being engaged, on either a practical or emotional level, then they are much more inclined to take their purchase elsewhere – a trend that businesses simply cannot afford to ignore.

The right content can take various forms, depending on audience preferences, and a Bazaarvoice study, looking at high street stalwart, John Lewis, confirmed the significance of displaying visual content on a retailer website; with 25 real shoppers looking at product images before any other content on the product page.

John Lewis recognised the value of visual association and transformed consumers into brand ambassadors with its #MyShoeStory campaign. By curating Instagram pictures of customers modelling their new shoes and then pushing these across into a variety of other social channels, John Lewis not only used CGC, providing its customers with inspiration, but also created further customer engagement too. This is a great example of how marketers can maximise engagement and build customer advocacy through the integration of CGC into a creative and thoughtful social campaign.

It’s only through listening to the individual preferences of consumers, analysing data on a case-by-case basis and considering each opinion as valuable stakeholder feedback that brands and retailers alike, can increase positive feedback, foster loyalty and retention, and crucially, increase sales figures.

Words by Prelini Udayan-Chiechi, VP Marketing EMEA at Bazaarvoice