Marketers sharpening focus in 2009

But marketers see their budgets holding up reasonably well this year, with spend being tightly controlled and directed towards growing and retaining market share.

In the audit of more than 650 marketers across the world, half of respondents said they’re either holding firm on budgets or anticipating increases. Nearly one third 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.

The survey indicates that marketers are committed to their staff and plan to invest in retaining employees for the digital age, rather than replacing them with new talent. And the study indicates that marketers’ efforts to reap better efficiency from current operations emphasise sharpening internal processes and alignments within their organisations rather than setting up broad restructuring plans or cutting ties with existing agency partners.  

“Marketers are not running scared from the economy. Broad concerns about the economic, stock market and credit downturn are not the leading forces shaping this year’s budget planning process”, said Donovan Neale-May (pictured), the CMO Council’s executive director. “Instead, marketers are paying close attention to their customers and responding to changes in the selling cycle. The emphasis is on building internal efficiencies and strategic cost cutting, increasing customer insight, and strengthening integration with sales to drive revenue and market share. There’s good news for agencies, too, as marketers are not viewing these relationships as a key to cost reductions.”

Some of the key findings in the survey include the following:

·        Realigning operational processes and capabilities to better support sales and drive demand generation was listed as the top accomplishment for global marketers in 2008, followed by improving performance and accountability for their organizations.

·        Customer anxiety and cutbacks are the number one force impacting budget allocations in 2009, followed by slower selling cycles and reduced consumer spending. Only 14.9pc indicated financial market disarray as a determining factor.

·        Retraining and developing existing staff is the leading strategy for acquiring or sharpening expertise in digital marketing competencies, with 62.9pc of respondents choosing training over recruiting new talent (28.6pc) or outsourcing (17.1pc).

·        When it comes to investments in marketing automation, tactical capabilities and point solutions dominate. The top two target areas of investment for 2009 are email marketing (44.9pc) and online surveys and research (33.2pc). Only 10.1pc are investing in master data, 12.8pc in marketing operational systems, and 9.3pc in marketing resource or process management solutions.

·        Growing or retaining market share is the leading executive mandate for marketers (47.6pc, followed by lowering costs and improving go-to-market efficiencies (43.5pc) and improving customer insight and retention (32.5pc).

·        Only 8.2pc respondents plan to build new linkages with line of business executives and just 7.4pc are seeking a board member position, suggesting limited aspirations to rise within the corporate hierarchy.

·        Digital marketing and new media dominates demand generation and advertising spend allocation priorities for the coming year, with budgets aimed at online and Web 2.0 initiatives almost 50pc higher than spend earmarked for traditional media.

• Just 9.3pc of marketers rate their e-metrics and measurement capabilities as excellent. 35.6pc of marketers are questioning spend, struggling to quantify value or are simply not doing a good job of converting visitors to leads or to customers.