In the coming years, we are expecting to see a broad and fantastic range of new digital marketing tools that will likely make the job of the digital marketer easier and more efficient (and maybe even replace him eventually). But the analysts at 451 Research are recommending caution where so many marketers are demonstrating zeal.
The truth is, they say, that very few companies actually have the infrastructure and capability to really research the information that they need to make digital marketing optimally effective.
Digital marketing is touted as being able to quickly adapt to the extremely adaptable modern consumer, but in order for it to do that, the companies implementing the strategies have to understand the technology involved and really know how to harness it.
One of the senior analysts at 451 Research, Matt Mullen, says: “An all-powerful CMO, someone who ultimately overpowers the CIO with a greater spending power, seems far from reality. In fact, there seems to be little to no hard evidence to support that somewhat wild prediction. A great deal of cash has been bet in the form of vendor acquisition and startup funding; while there are indications that the messaging is having some effect across the market, that is not yet delivering a parallel upswing in spending.”
In “The Contemporary CMO’s Toolkit 2.0,” Mullen and Research Director Alan Pelz Sharpe take an in-depth look into the current state of the Digital Marketing sector and offer up some key findings:
1) For digital marketing to be successful, it needs to be successfully integrated with sales and customer service operations. It needs to offer customers a consistent and holistic experience.
2) Integration with sales and customer service operations is rare in larger organizations (where digital marketing adoption rates are consistently higher), and there is typically a poor overall customer experience and lack of a unified strategy regarding customer service and sales. This remains one of the single biggest challenges facing organizations today.
3) Vendors of newer digital marketing technologies based on social media and advanced analytics should lower expectations based on buying patterns in 2014. Most buyers are still focusing most of their digital marketing efforts on email campaign management.
