2009 has begun full speed for most of us within the context of a deepening economic crisis impacting most marketers’ budgets and activities (where do marketers make deeper cuts). Marketers are understandably tightening their programs and operations to address costs pressure, access to capital and buyer confidence.
But are most marketers really clueless? This is sometimes not far from the true situation.
According to some 2009 marketing predictions, nearly half of marketers believe they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value but “76% of senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of their current customers.” In order to do this, many marketers focus on becoming more personalized, relevant and precise in customer communications; and are finding new ways to cross-sell or upsell current accounts.
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Although some marketers see in recession chances for their brands, the lack of customer insight is often an obstacle to maximizing full potential.
So where is marketing heading? For some, the new permanent crisis of marketing is on, and that’s certainly food for thought. Marketing is indeed in an existential crisis as it faces unprecedented challenges to its conventions.
But new, unprecedented opportunities can and should be grasped too. McKinsey Quarterly lists the new rules of marketing. The downturn’s new rules for marketers have arrived. Companies have to radically rethink how they do marketing – marketing can no longer be viewed as a collection of programs, but instead as way of behaving in a networked economy of “market communities.”
Our 2009 Yearly Marketing survey will cover the latest marketers’ trends in Belgium, but what is clear is that changes to marketing spending and strategy have already happened, while customer loyalty, experience and intelligence are top priorities. Marketers must certainly innovate to keep their jobs and help their companies survive this deep crisis.
Marketing leaders have had enough of hearing about Web 2.0 and Green. Oh yes, really? Many prefer to talk about the economy or how to make marketing recession-proof . A multi-dimensional question! For a start, client information is too often disconnected from companies’ strategies. Few employee rewards are tied to increasing customer marketing too. Actually, 60% of companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics. In other words, customer retention and customer experience are not key performance indicators for most employees despite being the top marketing challenges.
Anyway, even without the right formula for grabbing market share, what is sure is that some marketers have been making millions from Obama, so all is well then, right…?
For questions or comments, please contact philippe.ruttens@thom.eu!
Tags: branding, budget, crisis, performance, strategy
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on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 8:00 AM and is filed under General Marketing, Market Research, Trends.
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Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by
March 19th, 2009 at 1:42 PM
I find these figures quite positive, actually. The worse that could happen would be that the majority of senior marketers believe they are doing everything right, as the only way to improve in anything is to reckon that there is always room for improvement.
What worries me is the remaining 24%… At best, they could consider that a particular method has been exploited to its fullest. How can you get the full revenue potential? The notion of “customers potential” itself has evolved over the years, and will keep evolving. In the 50’s, using demographic segmentation was state of the art marketing, we now have many possible CRM approach, all of them having many claims of validity. But if one thing is certain, the golden rule of today is not the standard practice of tomorrow, even the best methods are challenged and replaced over time…
So, the good news is that 76% of marketers realize they need more insights (and honestly, don’t we all?).
And as far as the “crisis” is concerned, I believe we have great opportunities to improve marketing activities at their core: budgets are shrinking, and good customers insights become more critical before starting any investment. This should be positive news for the market research industry in general!
Additionally, other areas that have been historically ignored by the marketing community – such as marketing mix or channel spending optimization – now have more chances of being applied in a more systematic way.