Digital marketing: Professionals unsure about way forward, finds study

While most people agree that the marketing function needs to desperately reinvent itself, there are very few who actually know how to get there.

According to a study, ‘Digital Roadblock: Marketers Struggle to Reinvent Themselves’, by Adobe, while two in five (40 per cent) marketers stated that they want to reinvent themselves, only 14 per cent actually know how to go about it.

The study, based on a survey of more than 1,000 marketing professionals in the US, was released today at Adobe’s 12th annual Digital Marketing Summit, a conference attracting over 5,000 marketing professionals from across 33 countries.

Underscoring the rapid transformation of the marketing profession, 64 per cent of marketers expected their role to change in the next year and 81 per cent believed their role will change in the next three years. But the path to reinvention remained a challenge. Almost 30 per cent of the respondents cited lack of training in new marketing skills and organisational inability to adapt among the top obstacles to becoming the marketers they aspire to be.

When asked to describe the ideal, successful marketer 12 months from now, 54 per cent of marketers said they should take more risks, and 45 per cent expected to take more risks themselves. On the topic of new technologies, marketers are generally playing it safe, with 65 per cent saying they are more comfortable adopting new technologies once they become part of the mainstream.

The findings also highlighted a gap between marketers in companies that spend more than 25 per cent of their marketing budget on digital campaigns compared to those that spend less than 10 per cent on digital.

Marketers in high digital-spend companies are more likely to believe (82 per cent) they need to reinvent themselves to succeed, versus low digital-spend companies (67 per cent). Marketers from high-performing companies are three times more likely to say they know how to reinvent themselves than low performers.

“The shift to digital requires new technology, new approaches and, in many cases, entirely new roles for marketers,” said Ann Lewnes, Chief Marketing officer for Adobe. “The good news is that marketers see the change in front of them and understand they need to embrace data, focus on creating personalised experiences and work across their social, web and mobile channels”.

A majority of marketers (76 per cent) agreed they need to be more data-focused to succeed, but 49 per cent reported “trusting my gut” to guide decisions on where to invest their marketing budgets. 72 per cent of marketers agree their long-term success is tied to proving marketing return on investment.

74 per cent of marketers say that capturing and applying data to inform and drive marketing activities is the new reality, and 69 per cent agreed on the need to embrace hyper-personalisation – using data to provide the right products, services and content at the right time.

However, only 39 per cent of marketers report using consumer data and behaviour patterns to shape marketing strategy in the past 12 months and 45 per cent plan to use more consumer data and behaviour in the next 12 months.

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