Over half of marketers (52%) think that other C-level execs don’t understand marketing, as marketers realise they need to do more to communicate the value of martech at a business level, according to new research.
Key findings:
• Over half of marketers (52%) think that other C-level execs don’t understand marketing
• Only 35% think that their CEO strongly realises the potential revenue uplift and saving of martech investment
• Just a third a third (33%) think that c-suite understand the value of martech at a financial level
For the 2017 State of Marketing Tech report from Squiz, over 600 senior marketing professionals were surveyed globally to uncover their goals, challenges and digital vision.
The findings reveal that although 78% of senior marketers feel confident in explaining the value of technology investments, they believe there is a disconnect with the rest of the boardroom. Marketers say they see 47% of the c-suite outside of their department use some marketing technology in their roles, however they still do not believe that other functions understand martech’s potential impact on revenues in the way that they do.
Over half of global marketers (52%) think that other C-level execs don’t understand marketing and only 35% think that their CEO strongly realises the potential revenue uplift and saving of martech investment. It’s a similar story with the CIO; marketers think that just a third (33%) understand the value of martech at a financial level.
Squiz’s research suggests that marketers still need to develop closer relationships with the CEO. Currently they are most closely aligned with the CTO (52%) or CIO (47%), but only 27% say that their marketing team is working closely with the CEO. As a result, stakeholder buy in is still a challenge for 32% of marketers and over a quarter (28%) still don’t feel they are able to confidently set goals that the whole business can support.
97% of global marketers believe that marketing technology has allowed the marketing department to become more strategic in its approach and 43% say they’ve been able to develop more data-driven KPIs since investing in it.
Neil Davis, Managing Director UK and Europe at Squiz comments: “Our research highlights that digital has a firm place in the boardroom. However as martech is being used by the rest of the business, marketers need to be more confident that its value is being communicated. They must ensure that they are using technology beyond its basic capabilities so that they can make maximum impact at a business level.”
Last year there was increased investment in platforms such as CMS (83%) and CRM (62%), but this year 97% of business have invested in some form of marketing technology in the past 12 months. Breaking this down, 60% were adding to their existing stack, whilst 31% didn’t have any in place last year. Looking at the UK specifically, 26% of marketers invested in martech because they didn’t have any in place last year. In contrast in Australia it was 51% suggesting this region has been slower to adopt martech and in the US it was just 15% highlighting that these marketers implemented martech in their organisations earlier.
Marketers are investing in these products for numerous reasons. 62% want to better understand customers, 37% are doing it to remain competitive, 55% want to be able to take a data-driven approach to marketing and 57% need to automate processes and reduce time on admin.
Davis continues: “Marketers have realised the importance of martech for solving many of their challenges. The ability to be a more strategic marketing department means investment in technology has sky rocketed. Now marketers need to take that conversation to the next level and prove that martech can be used to drive growth across the entire organisation.”
Methodology
The study was conducted in January 2017 by Morar research among 600 UK, US and Australian senior marketers in companies of 500+ employees.