Investment plans not matching strategic goals

The survey of more than 650 marketers worldwide reports that senior management has mandated that marketing contributes to the organisational bottom line by retaining and growing market share and by reducing costs through increased go-to-market efficiencies. It also reveals that marketers themselves are confident that they can deliver on these requirements by focusing on execution through clearly defined goals, improving operational controls, and analytics to help in the efficient allocation of resources.

And marketers also appear to be becoming more confident around the effectiveness of their digital marketing expenditure as this becomes an increasingly important element of their demand generation investment.

“Digital marketing has moved well beyond search as social media and experiential marketing continue to grow and evolved,” said Dave Couture, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, one of the sponsors of this year’s report. “Savvy marketers are applying collaboration marketing methods as a central component of their efforts to maximise customer lifetime value in the digital economy.”

However, despite this confidence, the report indicates that marketers are gearing their investment plans towards simple, task-specific marketing software applications rather than more comprehensive operational and data management systems. This, according to the CMO Council, suggests “a critical disconnect in how they hope to achieve executive goals”.

The survey found the top two targets of investment for 2009 to be email marketing (44.9pc) and online surveys and research (33.2pc). Just 10.1pc of survey participants said they plan to invest in master data, 12.8pc intend to invest in operational systems, and 9.3pc in marketing resource or process management solutions.

This year’s report also found that just 9pc of marketers wish to work more closely with the CIO and IT department. “Senior marketers clearly need to elevate their game when it comes to integrating IT and data management into their operations and insights,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO.

Neale-May also pointed out that the study indicates that senior marketers may be failing to build the kind of relationships necessary to increase their status and influence within their organisations. In addition, he said that just 7.4pc are seeking board member positions, suggesting limited aspirations to rise within the corporate hierarchy.

Online media and digital channels of engagement becoming increasingly important, according to respondents, who are highly focused on enhancing talent, expanding competencies and sharpening measures and metrics for performance. Retraining and developing existing staff is the leading strategy for acquiring or improving expertise in digital marketing competencies, with 62.9pc of respondents opting for training over recruiting new talent (28.6pc) or outsourcing (17.1pc).

When it comes to measurement, the majority of marketers are sticking to traditional online methods like page views and registrations (64.6pc), site traffic and volume (58.4pc) and search prominence (45.2pc). The survey did find, however, that a growing number are measuring customer engagement, including translating online traction to the acquisition of new accounts and customers, tracking content consumption transactions or subscriptions, and measuring word of mouth recommendations.

The survey shows increased spending in online and digital at the expense of traditional media will continue in 2009. Digital marketing and new media dominate demand generation and advertising spend priorities for the coming year, with budgets aimed at online and Web 2.0 initiatives almost 50pc higher than the resources set aside for offline media.

And budgets are expected to hold up reasonably well this year, with half of respondents said they’re either holding firm on budgets or anticipating increases. Nearly a third of marketers are planning at least small budget increases, with 8.2pc of them planning to add more than 10pc. Almost half, however, say they will rein back their spending at least a little, with 18.8pc anticipating cuts of more than 15pc.