Top 5 Lessons From Marketing Leaders in 2018

Leaders are more effective at managing martech

Laggards are struggling to manage martech more than marketing organizations with more responsibilities: 26% of lagging organizations say they are not effectively acquiring or using martech, compared with only 16% of the leader organizations that report ineffectiveness. The challenge is that these laggard organizations need to effectively deploy martech to catch up with more-savvy competitors.

Leaders plan to accelerate martech spending in 2018

Nearly twice as many leaders (65%) as laggards (31%) plan to accelerate martech spending in 2018. Eighteen percent of leaders anticipate a significant martech spending increase and 47% expect a slight increase.

Prioritize: Develop a process to evaluate the acquisition of technology and audit the technologies your marketing organization already uses to determine who is using them and how much they cost.

Leading CMOs focus on the entire customer journey

Leaders focus on the entire customer journey, from acquisition to retention and growth, while laggards emphasize retention over acquisition. When it comes to acquiring customers, all CMOs recognize the importance of digital advertising and social media. However, leading CMOs tend to emphasize marketing analytics because they rely on data-driven acquisition tactics. Lagging marketing executives emphasize social marketing as a top tactic (likely for its low cost).

Prioritize: Build a strong data-driven marketing practice and educate peers at all levels about the role that customer experience plays in improving business results.

Leader and learner CMOs spend more on in-house staff

While leading and learner CMOs spend more on in-house staff than agencies, their lagging counterparts take the opposite approach. CMOs say they want to cut back on their use of agencies for strategy, preferring to limit agency engagements to tactical work and to fill program gaps. Leading CMOs are better equipped to actually execute on this because they spend an estimated 27% of their budget on in-house labor, slightly more than what’s budgeted for services, including agencies. Marketing organizations with fewer responsibilities, however, spend more with agencies than on in-house labor.

Prioritize: Invest in in-house staff to build key capabilities that can drive differentiation and create significant competitive advantage.

“Translate your vision for customer experience into a marketing plan that considers the data, technology and staff needed to execute,” says Virzi.