64% of marketers expect their role to change in the next year
Almost half (45 per cent) of marketers hope to take more risks in the next year, research from Adobe has found, with 30 per cent citing training in new marketing skills is one of the top obstacles faced, with the same number saying organisational inability to adapt is a barrier to performance.
The research of over 1,000 marketers is being unveiled today at Adobe’s annual Digital Marketing Summit, and discovered that a majority of marketers (76 per cent) agreed they need to be more data-focused to succeed, but 49 per cent report “trusting my gut” to guide decisions on where to invest their marketing budgets.
Marketers in high digital-spend companies – those who spend over a quarter of their budget on digital - are more likely to believe (82 per cent) they need to reinvent themselves to succeed, versus low digital-spend companies (67 per cent).
“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 personalized experiences and work across their social, web and mobile channels. They just need to take the plunge.”
It was found that 65 per cent of marketers surveyed are more comfortable adopting new technologies once they become mainstream.
Just under two thirds (61 per cent) of marketers see social media as the most critical area of focus 12 months from now, while 51 per cent see mobile as a key area.
63 per cent of marketers said they were doing more social marketing compared to last year, and more than half said they were doing more direct customer engagement via e-mail (51 per cent) and digital analytics (51 per cent) than they were in 2013.
“CEOs expect their CMOs to be leaders in digital business innovation and growth, and no one has a better seat at the intersection of ‘digital’ and ‘customers’ than marketers. So marketers must act now to transform themselves and their organizations,” said Yvonne Genovese, managing vice president of marketing leaders research at Gartner. “This starts with embracing the business of digital marketing and the technology that supports their business objectives. They also need to grasp the new data – all focused on customers and the results of digital marketing efforts. If they don’t, they risk seeing someone else step in to lead digital.”
The study, Digital Roadblock: Marketers Struggle to Reinvent Themselves, found that 64 per cent of marketers expect their role to change in the next 12 months, with 81 per cent expecting the job to change over the next three years.