Being locked down and forced to re-watch old movies like ‘The Princess Bride’ reminded me of a phrase that has become a bit of a meme – “You keep using that word. I don’t think that word means what you think it means”
Marketing is one of those words. You think you know what it means, but your definition is very different to someone else. And that’s okay, because marketing depends on the market.
Salesforce has done some research into marketing, and it’s interesting to see how perceptions of marketing change depending on the maturity of the market and perhaps the talent profile of marketing ‘professionals’ in a time and place.
Brand versus Revenue
There used to be a line between sales and marketing. The former was focused on the quarterly revenue targets and the latter was looking at long-term value creation.
Of the marketing folks surveyed for this report – 70% say that ‘Revenue’ is their top KPI. 65% track sales effectiveness, i.e. lead generation. In at equal 4th are what might be considered more marketing related metrics, like NPS (62%). Only 53% track customer referral rates and only 48% measure customer lifetime value.
These numbers are the global average. There are differences by region based on maturity. For example in the UAE, the most important metric is revenue. In Australia, the most important metric is customer referrals.
There is no doubt that marketing has to be accountable for the money spent. Revenue Impact Marketing is a thing, and it should be a thing, but there are a lot of factors that impact revenue – like Customer Experience (CX).
Customer Experience – The Myth versus the Reality
The research finds that 84% of customers say that the experience is as important as the product or service. However, as we have seen, many marketing people do not have a CX OKR or experience related target.
The maturity of the market also plays a part here. In the UAE, marketers cite ‘Complying with privacy regulations’ and ‘Balancing personalisation with customer comfort levels’ as top challenges. In Australia the top challenges include ‘Sharing a united view of customer data across business units’ and ‘engaging with customers in real-time’.
Different marketers have different customers, so they have different choices. This is shown in the way budgets are allocated.
Marketing Spend. It’s not all Ads. Or is it?
Across the survey, advertising is still the biggest portion of the marketing budget, for B2B (18%) and B2C (23%). While advertising can be used to build brands, given the focus on revenue, we assume that most of this advertising is tactical. In emerging markets, like the UAE, advertising makes up 30% of B2C marketing budgets.
Like all professions, Marketing is increasingly digital. The Chief Marketing Technology Officer (CMTO) being worked hard around the world with the 2nd largest marketing investment being technology. B2C companies are spending 21% of their marketing budget on technology. It’s 17% for B2B. These numbers don’t vary too much by country.
Where is the marketing technology budget being spent?
Keep in mind that this survey was conducted by Salesforce, so perhaps it is not surprising that the top answer was Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. At number 2 – Email Management Systems (EMS), also something that is tied very closely to CRM.
Many of these systems merge together. Depending on your technology strategy, things like Customer Data Platform (CDP), Data Management Platform etc can be one or several systems.
Regulations like GDPR are also making marketers more accountable. Consent Management Systems are starting to make an appearance on the list of investments required.
Localisation is still Key to Success
The Aquitude team are always looking out for Marketing best practice from around the world, but we also know that not every market is the same. Marketing is different if you are B2C or B2B company.
Your customers may be digitally savvy, or they may still be getting their heads around the fact that you know where they are and what they looked at on your webpage. Just because you can track their mobile phone, doesn’t mean you can use that data usefully in your marketing.
The marketing technology stack that you need in Melbourne is different to the systems that you need in Dubai or London. Maybe you just need to get the basics right first – some technology to understand your customers better. Some tech to help measure lifetime customer value.
Need more information? Chat to us about our outsourced CMTO service.