Impact, alignment and investment are the three central pillars of marketing effectiveness, according to GfK. And it was by analyzing this tripod that the research company identified that, although 40% of senior marketing professionals say they have all the necessary resources in at least one of the areas, only 7% say they feel fully equipped in all three pillars.
The data is part of the CMO Outlook Index, which examined CMOs’ perceptions of the success factors that drive effective marketing at their companies. At companies where the marketing leader feels they have a strong brand purpose, marketing typically has more influence: 81% of leaders at these companies include product development as a marketing responsibility (compared to an average of 69% across all respondents), and 78% say the same about pricing (compared to an average of 67%).
Companies where Marketing leaders see strong “Alignment” have more responsibilities assigned to teams
The “Alignment” pillar is about leveraging the business morocco whatsapp data value and purpose of the brand: a quarter of all decision-makers in the survey strongly agree that their company has a clearly defined mission and purpose, in addition to business goals, and that the brand also contributes to the business success of the company. What’s more, 60% of decision-makers in the survey prioritize long-term brand building in their marketing allocations.
For the “Investment” pillar , GfK looked at the balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales growth, as well as CEO and CFOs’ support for investing in long-term brand strategies. 19% of marketing leaders surveyed consider themselves well-positioned in both categories. Within that group, 60% say they spend at least seven in 10 of their marketing resources on long-term brand building, compared with 52% of all respondents. This level of long-term investment seems high, but it likely captures budget beyond immediate media and production costs.
When it comes to “Impact ,” 20% of decision-makers believe they are in an ideal position. They have a strong team with all the necessary skills and a good understanding of which marketing activities, channels and levers deliver the best ROI. Of these, 59% are extremely confident that their data, analytics and insights systems will be able to answer the critical business questions of the future. This contrasts sharply with the fact that only 28% of the full set of respondents could make the same claim.
“Impact” leaders are more likely than average to say they have mature capabilities in areas such as customer segmentation, campaign optimization, and extracting insights from data.
“It’s relatively common for CMOs to have optimized marketing capabilities, company brand alignment, or brand investment. The big drop-off comes when we look at who feels optimally positioned in all three areas. Our CMO Outlook Index findings help marketing leaders understand how their peers perceive marketing and where growth is needed,” said Gonzalo Garcia Villanueva, Chief Marketing Officer at GfK.