NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Feb 28, 2017) - Today, digital transformation company, Squiz, reveals new research which shows a disturbing gap between marketers and the C-Suite around the value of martech. For the 2017 State of Marketing Tech report, over 600 senior marketing professionals were surveyed globally to uncover their goals, challenges and digital vision.
The findings reveal that while 97 percent of global senior marketers believe martech has allowed their department to be more strategic and 78 percent feel confident in explaining the value of their technology investments, over half (52 percent) agree that other C-level execs do not understand marketing.
In fact, only 37 percent of U.S. marketers think that their CEO strongly realizes the potential revenue uplift and saving of martech investment. It's a similar story with the CIO; global marketers think that just one-third of CIOs understand the value of martech at a financial level.
Interestingly, the research suggests that marketers must speak the language of the boardroom and develop closer relationships with the CEO to truly demonstrate the value of martech to the bottom line. Currently global marketers are most closely aligned with the CTO (52 percent) or the CIO (47 percent), but only 27 percent say that their marketing team is working closely with the CEO. As a result, stakeholder buy in is still a challenge for 32 percent of marketers.
In addition, marketers must better align their goals with the rest of the C-Suite and more confidently set goals the whole business can support. Currently less than half of U.S. marketers feel their goals are strongly aligned with the rest of the C-Suite and over a quarter (29 percent) still don't feel they are able to confidently set goals that the whole business can support.
Ceasar Chevalier, regional director of North America at Squiz, comments: "The value of martech is more crucial now than ever before. As we enter into a year of uncertainty and potentially more disruptive to businesses, it is critical for companies to gain customer trust and loyalty. Marketers need to shift their mind set and speak the language of the C-Suite to showcase the value of martech and how it can not only help build this customer trust, but make a true impact at a revenue and sales level."
Additional Key Findings
- 43 percent of global marketers think they've been able to develop more data-driven KPIs since investing in martech.
- Global marketers are investing in these products for numerous reasons:
- 62 percent want to better understand customers
- 57 percent need to automate processes and reduce time on admin
- 55 percent want to be able to take a data-driven approach to marketing
- 37 percent are doing it to remain competitive
- In 2016, there was increased investment in platforms such as CMS (83 percent) and CRM (62 percent), but in 2017, 97 percent of businesses have invested in some form of marketing technology in the past 12 months. Breaking this down, 60 percent were adding to their existing stack, whilst 31 percent didn't have any in place last year.
- Looking at the U.S. specifically, 15 percent of marketers invested in martech because they didn't have any in place last year. Similarly in the U.K. it was just 26 percent. In contrast, however, 51 percent of marketers in Australia invested in martech because they didn't have any in place last year, suggesting this region has been slower to adopt martech.
Notes to editors
The study was conducted in January 2017 by Morar research among 600 US, UK and Australian senior marketers in companies of 500+ employees.
The full report can be found here.
About Squiz
Squiz is a global technology and strategy business that drives digital transformation for its customers. Top rated by analyst house Ovum, Squiz's clients include Dermalogica, William Hill, LexisNexis and Legal & General. Their digital solutions allow organisations to manage complex digital data and service requests in one technologically savvy and beautifully designed portal, driving new value for stakeholders. Founded in Australia in 1998, Squiz has more than 450 employees around the world in eleven offices including Sydney, London, Edinburgh, New York and Wellington. Learn more at squiz.net and follow @SquizUK to stay up to date.