SYDNEY: A new survey out of engagement marketing platform Marketo finds that 53% of marketers’ primary focus is now engaging customers to drive revenue. It also shows they are failing to bring their CEOs on this journey with them.
Marketo commissioned the survey of 200 ANZ senior marketing decision-makers to highlight the impact of misalignment between marketers’ and CEOs’ strategies.
“When the priorities of marketers and CEOs are different, marketing departments will continue to struggle to get the budget, technology, and tools they need,” said Sydney-based Chris Connell, senior director of marketing for Marketo ANZ.
“Internally, marketers need to sell the benefits of engaging customers,” he says
“Forty per cent of marketers feel their C-suite does not listen to them or understand the nuances of marketing. In addition to this, 35% say they don’t have the technology they need to drive customer engagement and insights, and 75% want better technology than they currently have.
“It is clear that marketers are switching tactics, from disruption-based marketing, to meaningful customer engagement, but they haven’t yet explained to their internal stakeholders why this is important. Having the attention of your customers is useful, but it’s meaningless if you don’t engage them in a highly personal way, at scale. It’s positive to see engagement as such an overwhelming priority for marketers, but the next step is to get C-suite buy in.”
Email still huge
Additional insights from the research found that although marketing has come a long way, email still has a huge influence. The survey found a quarter (26%) of ANZ businesses are too reliant on single-channel marketing, saying if email wasn’t available to them tomorrow, it would be ‘devastating’ to their marketing execution, with this figure leaping to one-third (32%) for B2B marketers.
“Relying on email just won’t cut it in the engagement economy,” Connell said. “Customers demand personalisation and authentic interactions at every touchpoint – not just a spray-and-pray single-channel approach.”
Additional findings
Other findings from the survey included:
- The most popular way marketers reported they are going to engage with their audience is improving the customer journey, to turn existing customers into advocates.
- Twice as many B2B marketers believe they currently engage effectively with their customers than B2C marketers.
- When asked to nominate what it was about companies they admire, marketers consider the ability to understand customers almost twice as important as the quality of the product. Only 12% of marketers think that product is the most crucial element to a business’s success.
- Marketers twice as likely to focus on engaging customers (53%) as those focused on selling to them (26%)
- A quarter of the B2B respondents say the people they report to don’t understand the nuances of marketing
About the research
The survey was commissioned by Marketo and conducted in July 2017 by Morar Consulting among 200 senior marketers from Australia and New Zealand, from companies of 500+ employees.
About Marketo
Marketo, Inc., offers a leading engagement platform that empowers marketers to create lasting relationships and grow revenue. Consistently recognised as an innovation pioneer, Marketo is the trusted platform for thousands of CMOs thanks to its scalability, reliability, and openness. Marketo is headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices around the world, and serves as a strategic partner to large enterprise and fast-growing organisations across a wide variety of industries. To learn more about the Marketo Engagement Platform, LaunchPoint® partner ecosystem, and the vast community that is the Marketing Nation®.
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