Online marketing spend may have increased, but marketers still don’t know how to use online tools effectively is the conclusion of a global Coremetrics study, “The Face of the New Marketer,” which finds that while most marketers report a desire to use online data to personalise their marketing efforts and deliver tailored offers to their customers, their current technology use does not support this goal. Furthermore, there is a marked discrepancy between marketers’ need to manage metrics and their confidence in the accuracy of the data.
75 percent of the 360 marketers surveyed report that using various online tools for personalisation is a priority and 81 percent claim that it’s very important for them to increase visitor value through compelling product and content offerings. Yet only half report they currently use online personalisation tools (51 percent).
Kevin Mackin, Coremetrics’ General Manager for Australia and New Zealand, elaborates, “This global survey shows that many marketers are struggling to derive real value from their online marketing tools. They understand the need to personalise messages for target audiences – they just don’t know how to go about it. This is surprising given just how critical tailored marketing efforts are becoming in competitive markets.”
While spending on online marketing efforts has increased, most marketers lack confidence that they are using the right metrics to gauge marketing success and value. When asked how they would evaluate marketing success at the end of 2009, nearly half (47 percent) said: “meeting our key performance indicators.” However, well over half of marketers (62 percent) claim they are not confident they are tracking the right metrics for online marketing performance—a significant discrepancy.
Other important findings in “The Face of the New Marketer” include:
The two top challenges facing marketers are:
– Obtaining an integrated view of customers across online marketing touch points (45 percent)
– Interpreting the resulting data (41 percent)
The three areas that have seen the biggest spending increase this year are:
– Online marketing (69 percent)
– Generating online business (56 percent)
– Web 2.0 (55 percent)
The three most commonly used forms of online marketing are:
– Email marketing (87 percent)
– Display advertising (86 percent)
– Paid search (69 percent)
The three most commonly used marketing measurement tools are:
– Individual online marketing campaign performance (77 percent)
– Online customer behavior—per visit/session (76 percent)
– Display advertising performance based on impressions (69 percent)
