What Impact Has COVID-19 Had on Digital Marketing Transformation?

October 16, 2020

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Business of Marketing | Customer-Centric | Innovation

AltimeterbyProphet Digital Marketing Transformation Amid COVID Oct2020If the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized anything to organizations, it’s the importance of digital and the role it plays in current strategies, as well as in the future. This can be seen in a new report [download page] from Altimeter, a Prophet Company, which found that COVID-19 has prompted a majority of marketers to either continue or accelerate with their plans to improve or transform their marketing operations.

While about one-fifth (18%) of the more than 600 respondents – who hailed from nine global markets representing organizations with at least 1,000 employees – say that the COVID-19 crisis has caused them to stop their digital marketing transformation plan they were running pre-pandemic, more than three-quarters of respondents are still moving ahead in improving and transforming their digital marketing. The largest share (30%) report that although the crisis has not affected it, they are continuing with their improvement/transformation plan, while others (26% share) are continuing with their transformation despite a decreased investment in it.

And, perhaps after seeing traditional marketing opportunities such as events fall by the wayside or be replaced by digital alternatives, not to mention the increased receptivity to digital offerings and experiences, some 22% of respondents claim COVID-19 has caused them to step up improvements to their digital marketing operations.

Moreover, COVID-19 has uncovered gaps in organizations’ digital sales-readiness. Although more than half report that significant (19%) or some (43%) gaps have been exposed, and that they are making progress in closing them, about 1 in 7 (14%) say that they are struggling to close the significant gaps they have discovered due to COVID-19.

Two-thirds of organizations also are relying more on data and intelligence technologies to gain insights during the pandemic. These respondents say they are driven to increase their use of these technologies by a desire to get more value out of these investments (59%), help align teams and colleagues on a ‘single source of truth’ (49%) and discover important insights (44%).

When asked to select which metrics their organization actually measures today related to digital transformation (top 3), respondents cited growth (31%), customer metrics (31%), business performance such as revenue or profit (31%) and operational efficiencies such as productivity and cash flow (30%) as some of the top metrics. To a lesser extent they are also tracking engagement metrics: active customer engagement (i.e. comments or likes, 26%), employee engagement and satisfaction (23%) and passive customer engagement (i.e. downloads, clicks and time on site or in app, 20%).

To read more, the full report can be found here.

About the Data: Findings are based on a 9-country survey of 628 professionals (including in-house and agency digital strategists and C-suite or other executive-stage leaders) from brands, consulting firms and other organizations with at least 1,000 employees.

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