New research from the CMO Council explores how the self-reliant buyer and a chaotic, digital-first customer journey have flipped much of the sales action to the top of the funnel, making marketers responsible for nearly half of a company’s revenue—yet scarce resources, mediocre data skills, and a skeptical CEO threaten to undermine marketing’s efforts.
Insights from the new report, Rising Above the Fray: How Marketers Can Right the Revenue Ship, produced in partnership with Televerde, are based on a survey of over 150 brand leaders and in-depth interviews with executives from companies including Cisco, F5, Pitney Bowes, Five9, PepsiCo and Henkel.
The study highlights the pressure marketers are under to grow revenue
They face many challenges, including the need to show marketing attribution to revenue and make investments in data analytics and MarTech pay off. Here are a few of the major
- 63 percent of marketers say they’re under very high to extreme pressure to deliver revenue growth
- 53 percent say they’re only moderately confident or worse that they’ll meet their revenue targets
- 57 percent think their CEO is only moderately satisfied or worse with marketing’s performance
“What can marketers do to improve their odds? With limited resources, marketers need to go deep on a handful of strategic initiatives. Digital experience, content strategy and omnichannel should be top priorities,” said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council, in a news release.
Marketers must close a data literacy gap inside marketing and make better use of customer intelligence to engage and acquire new customers
To this end, marketers are increasing investments in MarTech aimed at leveraging data, while AI promises to bring speed and scale to the data-insights-action process.
Data-related key findings include:
- 85 percent of marketers have data literacy gaps inside their teams
- 79 percent are only moderately successful or worse at leveraging data for customer segmentation
- 73 percent are only moderately successful or worse at applying data analytics for customer insights
- 75 percent are only moderately successful or worse at actioning on customer insights
“There are many touchpoints along the journey to revenue that need to be appreciated, measured, and refined to get to the revenue outcome,” said Deanna Ransom, Global Head of Marketing and Marketing Services and Chairperson of Diversity and Inclusion at Televerde, in the release. “Leveraging data-driven insights to make data-driven decisions will enable marketing leaders to set new KPIs to demonstrate success in conjunction with enabling greater predictability along the pathway to sustainable revenue.”
