Ever wonder what is being learned from the social web? Is there any sign of new wisdom? Anything new being learned? If so where is this wisdom in the marketplace?
According to a CMO Council survey of 800 senior marketers, 37.6 percent of respondents say annual budgets will not change in 2008, while 33.1 percent expect to increase spend by up to five percent, and almost 10 percent say their budgets will grow between six and 10 percent. Only 7.6 percent expect to see budget increases greater than 11 percent. Last year 52.6% of global marketers had budgets that equaled less than 4% of revenue and 35.4% indicated they spent the equivalent of 4 to 10% of revenue on marketing.
While marketing performance measurement dashboards topped the list of solution needs in 2007, the focus for 2008 is far more revenue and demand-based with email campaign management and customer relationship management solutions leading the procurement intentions list.
The allocation of budget dollars is moving away from advertising and public relations towards customer-facing and lead and response generation spend in 2008. Heading the list of spend areas for 2008 are events and trade shows, direct marketing, sales support and online marketing. Further down the list is advertising and PR which was far better placed in 2007.
53 percent of survey respondents say quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs and investments remains the top challenge in the year ahead. Those marketers gaining ground in raising credibility and stature point to the following factors as key to underscoring marketing's value: In reviewing these one must ask, have the marketers heard of social networking?
- Impactful branding and communications
- Awareness and reputation gains
- Building internal relationships with sales & finance
- Improved customer relationships
- Quality of leads and opportunities
Important organizational and operational changes planned for 2008 include:
- Adding new competencies and capabilities
- Improving accountability of the marketing organization
- Deploying content and web site management solutions
- Implementing marketing ROI and/or resource allocation capabilities
Senior marketers identified the top six areas of investment to include:
- Email campaign management (aren't these over rated and outdated?)
- Customer relationship management (CRM) (maybe it should be Vendor Relations Management?)
- Marketing performance measurement dashboards
- Customer intelligence and solutions (maybe just listen to the conversations)
- Search engine marketing (SEM) (what drives traffic? Good conversations?)
- Sales and marketing integration tools (???????????)
The 12 leading areas of marketing dollar allocation in 2008 are expected to be: (don't see anything about leveraging the dynamics of social networks)
- Strategy and branding
- Events and trade shows
- Operations
- Direct marketing (including telemarketing, mailings, email)
- Sales support
- Online marketing (web site, SEO, SEM, viral, podcasts/blogs, communities)
- Advertising
- Market research
- Systems
- Merchandising and promotions
- Public and analyst relations
- Customer data integration and analytics
Marketers reported significant agency turnover in 2007. Performance issues were the most prevalent reasons for swapping out agencies in 2007. These included: (sounds like an internal relationship problem)
- Lack of innovation
- No value-added thinking
- Poor creative
- Quality of work
- Results and deliverable
Venting on the biggest sources of aggravation and frustration, says the report, senior marketers pointed to the following conditions as top of their list: (hmmm...more relationship oriented problems)
- Organization culture
- Senior management mindset
- Insufficient budget
- Having to do more with less
- Politics and power plays
- Being too reactionary and tactical
Based on the above data revealed by the CMO Study maybe the wisdom of the past does not understand the dynamics of markets today.
Listening to and learning from conversations enabled by the social web can bring new wisdom. But without understanding there is no basis for wisdom. Based on the CMO study, are markets gaining any understanding?
What say you?