***This blog post has been updated on 17 May 2021***
Today, technology marketing moves faster and consumer behaviors are not that easy to predict.
According to the 6th State of Marketing Report conducted by Salesforce; strategic priorities, challenges, and technologies transform the profession. In this case, these below are especially important to consider as businesses navigate from crisis mode to back-to-work to growth.
👉 Changing definitions of marketing success
👉 Shifts in engagement standards and privacy practices
👉 Evolving marketing skillsets and processes
👉 Unfolding data management strategies and tactics
But what’s more?
Marketers now are looking for reliable and accessible data to drive marketing performance.
Their focus is on marketing intelligence more than ever before as they are constantly looking for ways to optimize marketing spend and understand their engagement with their customers.
Challenge is to gather data from multiple sources as it is very time-consuming. According to Salesforce, 43% of marked or spend a week or more each month collecting cleansing and harmonizing data sets.
Of course, this time could’ve been spent more wisely analyzing data for real-time in applying the inside to marketing strategies.
Here are the improvements marketer are expecting this year.
⚡Optimizing the marketing spend and allocate their budget
⚡Having an overall marketing performance
⚡Having a better understanding of customer engagement through efficient data
⚡Revenue growth & campaign KPI performance
Hopefully, Salesforce helps companies to meet the requirements of changing customer demands. Learn more:
Technology Improvements will Guide an Ambiguous Future
Marketers, along with the rest of the world, are facing a crisis. But as time goes on, a business will recover, confidence will increase, and a newfound appreciation for innovation will take root.
Marketers expect the next ten years to bring transformational impacts from new technologies and societal developments.
From a technological standpoint, marketers expect 5G wireless networks to significantly impact their work over the next ten years. However, nothing more is anticipated than the new customers and prospects brought online as digital life permeates the global population even more than now.
As we lead through change and figure out how to get businesses back to full speed, a combination of next-gen tech and sound strategy will help push us into growth mode.
Innovation Wins
As companies look to connect and build trust in uncertain times, customer experience has become more critical than ever.
A related study of consumers and business buyers found 84% percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. This is up from 80% in 2018.
There is still room for improvement. Real-time customer engagement is the number one challenge for marketers. Sixty-nine percent say traditional marketing roles limit customer engagement.
There is also a disconnect between two divisions that are key to customer engagement success: marketing and IT. Seventy-two percent of marketers say they are aligned with their IT organizations, yet a separate study of IT leaders ranks poor business unit alignment as a top challenge.
AI usage has Skyrocketed with Growing Data
Many marketers and high performers, in particular — are increasingly turning to an array of digital tools and platforms to engage customers at precisely the right moment on the right channel.
As the amount of available data has grown, so has the number of platforms to manage it. Marketers now use an average of six data management tools, compared with three in 2018. This explains why marketers cite data unification and activation among their top 5 challenges.
Artificial intelligence is now making a real-world impact. Eighty-four percent of marketers report using AI, which is up from 29% in 2018. This is an eye-popping 186% increase in adoption in two years.
These trends have an impact on the world. For example, marketers in the Netherlands project to use 50% more data sources to power their programs in 2021 than the global average. And in the technology industry globally, marketers plan to use 60% more data this year than the overall industry average.
Account-based Marketing (ABM) is Essential Now in B2B
Account-Based Marketing Becomes Standard in B2B Organizations. Customers expect empathy, tailored engagement, and value regardless of whether they’re buying for themselves or on behalf of their employers.
Ninety-two percent of B2B marketers now have an ABM program. The rise of ABM programs is pretty recent – 64% were started within the past five years.
However, these programs have grown more sophisticated, as 68% of them use automation. Also, eighty-two percent of high performers say B2B and B2C marketing tactics converge, versus 67% of underperformers.
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