Two-thirds of CMOs expect to spend more on marketing in 2019, while business leaders believe that brand awareness is the top metric to track during content campaigns, a new study from Gartner has found.
The latest annual CMO Spend Survey highlights the sheer scale of marketing and its role within a company. Just over 11% of a company’s revenue is now devoted to marketing and many will be spending more on new technology next year to gain a better understanding of a customer’s journey.
Serving up relevant, personalised messages have been the primary trend identified by experts and a wealth of recent reports, and CMOs are taking this knowledge on board as an investment is now clearly geared towards data, analytics, information and insights that will empower marketers to publish added-value materials.
Another key trend is also still prevalent – unfortunately so for brands. Marketing measurement has long been a bugbear and it remains a problem as CMOs are finding it difficult to prove how marketing is driving value for the wider enterprise. Brand awareness is the most important metric for CMOs ahead of return on investment (ROI). However, just 1% focus on “customer lifetime value”.
“We see some leading CMOs that have developed a shared understanding of the metrics that demonstrate the value marketing delivers to the overall organization,” Gartner’s Senior Research Director Ewan McIntyre said in a statement. “However, old habits die hard, and most CMOs still gravitate toward metrics that have less meaning outside of the marketing team.”
