Companies falling short in digital and social marketing

A new survey of chief marketing officers (CMOs) conducted by Heidrick & Struggles and Digital Scientists reveals that CMOs across nearly all sectors believe their companies are under-delivering in the area of digital marketing.

Digital marketing is obviously a broad term, encompassing everything from online advertising and social media to generalized customer-acquisition and awareness programs. And really digital marketing is just another avenue of marketing's overarching goal: having what people want.

Regardless of the method or delivery mechanism there are two universal rules related to sales and marketing:

• Marketing is having what people want
• Sales is getting rid of what you have

The two items above are arguably the most important things I learned in business school, and frame (for better or worse) the way that I think about product development, marketing, and so on.

The survey also showed that marketers rely on digital marketing proficiency as a way to acquire new customers, while brand-building and geographic expansion of markets were seen as much less important.

Other key survey findings:

• Proficiency in digital marketing is highly valued, but under-delivered
• There is an over-reliance on outside agencies to meet talent gap
• Key growth tactics: high points for analytics and search engine optimization, low points for new media advertising
• Few are satisfied with their company's marketing effectiveness.
• Marketers need more help from IT
• Few want to focus on global growth

As always, surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt, but it's good to see that marketers realize that they aren't yet taking full advantage of available tools and that there are options to learn more and build new programs.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom

[sparkystacey]

One thing that I found notable in this PR was this comment, "44% of respondents want IT to take responsibility for analytics. "

That scares me a bit for the 44%. Marketing needs to be savvy enough to own and read their analytics to stay on top of it. Thats akin to outsourcing your entire business strategy to a consultant. For it to be successful, you need to own it and really, really understand it.

-Stacey
http://www.siliconspark.com

[basebot]

Absolutely right, Stacy. Do they want IT to take responsibility for typing their emails as well? Get with the program marketers.

[lizzerevangelist]

You're right - that 44% number was much higher than expected. When we followed up with CMO's about it, several found the very idea insulting (that marketing would ask IT to own analytics).

It's important to remember that respondents included CMO's from both B2B and B2C businesses. Some of the CMO's with smaller budgets and staffs (often B2B) were looking for IT to do the legwork to pull together analytics from across numerous marketing / web-based investments. They were also looking for IT to help connect sales to finance so as to get a better read on ROI.

The CMO's we asked were well aware that IT doesn't have the skill sets or customer knowledge to read or interpret the analytics - just as you've noted.

So, put another way, they were looking for IT to do the legwork, but still recognized that Marketing would need to interpret or read findings.

Tom Klein
Chief Scientist
Digital Scientists

http://digitalscientists.com

[melasina]

Dave, like many who are on the technology side of marketing, you've mistaken Social Media for Social Marketing. They are very different animals.

Social Marketing as a discipline goes back the the early 1970's. There's a good description of the confusion here: http://cli.gs/0XEbjM