IBM announced that mobile marketing is on the rise but social media marketing expectations have tempered, according to results from its global survey of marketers, titled “The State of Marketing 2011.” The sample, conducted by Unica, covered nearly 300 online and direct marketers across a wide range of industries, geographies, and company sizes.
Results revealed a number of key findings, including the urgent need to turn data into action, the increasing recognition of mobile’s marketing power, social media marketing growing pains, and a desire for more integrated technology solutions.
Growing Use of Mobile: More than 40 percent currently use mobile marketing tactics and another 20 percent plan to do so within the year, as more consumers rapidly adopt connected mobile devices.
Social Media Expectations: More than half of marketers use social media, but based on responses, their enthusiasm is tempered, suggesting that the peak of inflated expectations has passed; marketers are focused on finding the value that social channels can yield with more targeted insights and actions.
Marketers Ready to Bridge the ‘Data Analysis to Action’ Gap: Nearly 60 percent of respondents listed “measurement, analysis and learning” as their top information technology (IT) bottleneck, whereas last year, they overwhelmingly viewed “IT support of marketing needs” at the top. More than 60 percent identified “turning data into action” as their top organizational issue.
Marketing Technology in Demand: Nearly 90 percent of respondents expressed interest in an integrated marketing suite, as the industry’s need for technology grows and adoption matures. More than half of marketers cited technology as the key to productivity, in particular, to resolving the challenges of meaningful measurement and analysis, and to choosing the next best course of action.
Marketing Silos Limit Cross-Channel Marketing: Marketers believe in the concept of Interactive Marketing, but have more progress to make toward this vision. While responses suggest that interest in achieving truly integrated cross-channel dialogs with customers is high, nearly half of survey participants report that they are only partially achieving that goal. The key barrier is organizational structure and internal processes. Regardless, 57% report the adoption of inbound marketing methods (personalized targeting/messaging) in their web channels.
Measuring Marketing Effectiveness is Critical: Marketers are getting more serious about using cross- channel attribution to understand marketing effectiveness. In the ranking of top marketing issues, “attributing success to marketing” took the second spot. Those marketers who adopt an interactive marketing strategy will have a centralized view of marketing touches or one view of the history of marketing interactions with customers.
“’More’ is certainly the key word for our times. But as the results of our annual survey of marketers reveal, the proliferation of marketing channels and the simultaneous explosion of data pose a wealth of challenges for marketers in 2011,” said Paul McNulty, EMM Marketing, IBM. “Marketers are looking for ways to turn more marketing possibilities into better marketing results.”
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