81% of all Marketers Say They Need to Overhaul Their Marketing Organizations

• 81% of all marketers say they need to overhaul their marketing organizations if they hope to drive revenue and been seen as a strategic organization within their companies
• While nearly 60% of all marketers think they are doing a bad job of using data and technology to engage their customers, they are stepping up to make a major investment to fix this shortcoming as
  • 77% of them say two big areas of investment skills-wise will be in data analysis and marketing ops
  • Top 4 areas of financial investment will be in social marketing software, mobile marketing, engagement software and data analytics and email marketing systems
  • These levels of investment aren’t a waste of time. For those marketers who have already taken the plunge with marketing tech and are using data to engage customers, almost 70% of them are setting company strategy.
• Impact of technology in marketing can’t be understated – IoT and beacons are some of the biggest trends that will shape marketing.

So what does this all mean? Marketers need technology but most are not using it optimally. This not a surprise. The report I wrote a year ago showed that most marketers were only at steps 1 or 2 in optimizing what they have.

So not only do Marketers need to optimize what they have but they also have to figure out the gaps in what they have and what else to add. Without a framework to benchmark where they are, especially compared to their competitors, knowing the answers to that could prove difficult. Here’s some questions that can help marketers understand where they are at:

While marketers do need technology, it can only help the business if it is optimized. It will be interesting to see how 2015 pans out and the results of the survey next year. Marketers may need to create a new type of relationship between IT and Marketing to reach this optimized state.

@drnatalie