Jul 01 2023

Navigating the 2023 Marketing Landscape: Insights from Gartner’s Report

Gartner’s recent report, “The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy in 2023,” uncovers some stark realities and key insights for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). A key takeaway is the growing pressure on marketing budgets due to rising costs and inflationary pressures. This year, marketing budgets have seen a slight dip from 9.5% of the total company revenue in 2022 to 9.1% in 2023. Consequently, about 75% of CMOs find themselves in a situation where they are being asked to achieve more with less, including a push to curtail spending on martech (marketing technology) investments.

Several areas like technology, media, and talent are feeling the pressure, with the technology utilization rate falling 16 percentage points in the past two years and a noticeable decline in digital advertising impressions despite high investment. Even talent acquisition is proving to be challenging, with inflation and competition driving up costs despite widespread layoffs.

In these challenging times, the report lays out critical imperatives for CMOs. A focus on growth, yield, and return should be at the forefront, necessitating regular environmental scans and recalibration of the marketing function’s capabilities and investments. There’s a pressing need to optimize technology and improve its utilization and ROI. CMOs are also encouraged to identify multichannel KPIs directly tied to business outcomes. Budget comparisons with peer organizations could help identify potential areas of increased or reduced spending.

The report suggests that, in a volatile market environment, success hinges on smart planning, agility, and the ability to respond flexibly to changes. With a keen eye on efficiency and a flexible approach to budgeting, marketing leaders can turn challenges into opportunities, driving more value from each marketing dollar spent in 2023.

Download the full report here.

May 31 2023

The Impact of Generative AI on Marketing and Sales Strategy

AI and machine learning (ML) technologies are transforming the marketing and sales sector, with generative AI (gen AI) leading the charge. Gen AI is increasingly adopted by sales-tech players due to its innovative capabilities. As businesses operate in an increasingly digital-first world, these technologies have become essential tools. This is prompting businesses to reconsider their operations, customer connections, and services.

Gen AI is expected to disrupt how both B2B and B2C businesses approach customer experience, productivity, and growth. Around 20% of current sales-team functions could potentially be automated thanks to these advancements.

Customer engagement models are evolving as they demand everything, everywhere, all the time. The trend is leaning towards online ordering and reordering. The most successful companies, those increasing their market share by at least 10 percent annually, tend to use advanced sales technology, build hybrid sales teams, and offer hyper-personalized services.

AI technology is becoming easier and less expensive to implement while offering an increasing complexity and speed that outpaces human capacity. Venture capital investment in AI has grown 13-fold over the last decade, leading to a surge in usable data and accessible technology.

Gen AI differs from traditional AI in its adaptability to a wide variety of downstream tasks, including content generation. Traditional AI, on the other hand, needs human supervision and specific data for each new task. Gen AI marks a significant shift in power, sophistication, and utility in artificial intelligence.

Download the full report here.

Apr 25 2023

The Power of Creative Quality in Advertising

Magna Media and Yahoo have unveiled a study that explores the critical role of creative quality in advertising and the components contributing to successful ads. The research, involving more than 4,100 marketers, scrutinized the impact of ad creative on 61 metrics across various sectors including the automotive industry, food delivery services, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). In the test involving 108 display ads with diverse attributes across multiple devices, the results indicated that minor improvements in creative could significantly optimize ad performance, while enhancing brand quality and trust. Moreover, the findings suggested that mediocre creative quality might result in squandered budgets.

Crucial findings revealed that creative quality accounted for 56% of the purchase intent, thereby heightening awareness and molding consumer perceptions. Advertising memorability was shown to depend significantly on high-quality creative, with a substantial increase of over 23% in aided recall as compared to a mere 2% for poor creative. Informative ads were found to keep viewers engaged longer, enhancing on-screen time by over eight seconds, lifting consideration by 32%, and boosting brand consideration by over 27%. Additionally, the data suggests marketers should optimize media across devices, such as leveraging mobile screens with compelling brand propositions and calls-to-action. On desktops and laptops, imagery should be prioritized to captivate attention, and ads should incorporate people to foster more effective consumer connections.

Click here to read the full story.

Dec 06 2022

ChatGPT – Still a ways to go

Everyone, especially marketers, should be testing new AI solutions to maximize efficiencies in delivering better product experience, development, and marketing content. ChatGPT was launched in November and is now the most talked about new AI tool. Ryan Reynolds has even claimed to develop a TV ad with it.  Compared to other AI tools that may focus on writing, video or coding, ChatGPT attempts to take any prompt and deliver a complete solution.  Although the results are pretty impressive, there is a high error rate and quality variance depending on your query.  The attached article from Fast Company provides a good summary.  It’s promising but has a ways to go to be a go-to tool for marketers.

Click here to read the full story.

Oct 25 2022

Toxic cultures: Know how harmful they are and how to fix them.

Most of us have experienced and heard stories about toxic work environments. They are more common than one might think as approximately 1 in 10 workers experience their workplace culture as toxic. This can have a big impact on your results. In fact, 90% of CEOs and CFO in North America believe that improving their culture would boost financial results.  This article from MIT Sloan Management Review identifies key predictive factors such as leadership, social norms, and work design based on multiple studies. The authors also give detailed tips on how to design or change your environment to reduce toxicity.

Click here to read the story.

Oct 27 2021

Economic worries overtake COVID fears for first time in almost 20 months

In this latest study by IPSOS, COVID now ranks as the 3rd biggest concern among the global consumer population behind economic-related worries of poverty and unemployment. This is a significant shift in sentiment and should be considered as we develop messages to our audiences as we get further from the pandemic.

Click here to read the full study