Behold the marketing technologist: about 2 in 3 marketers in the US and Europe believe that understanding marketing technology is becoming increasingly important for successful senior marketers. That’s according to a new report from DataXu [download page], which finds 66% of respondents saying that their company currently has a Chief Marketing Technologist in place.
Interestingly, while US marketers (78%) are considerably more likely than their European (63%) counterparts to say that marketing technology understanding is becoming a more important skill, they’re far less likely (53% and 73%, respectively) to say hat they have a Chief Marketing Technologist at their company. As a result, the CMO is much more likely to be tasked with the responsibility for marketing technology purchases in the US than in Europe, per the report.
As for those budgets, the survey of 532 marketers reveals where investments will be made in the next 12 months:
- A leading 55% will use social media management tools, with these far more popular in the US (71%) than Europe (47%);
- Roughly half (49%) will invest in both email marketing and digital advertising technology, again higher among US than European respondents; and
- Some 41% will invest in customer insights/analysis.
Across all technologies and software identified, US marketers were more likely than European marketers to say they are planning usage.
US marketers were also most likely to be increasing their usage of various marketing technologies when compared to current usage levels. The most noteworthy increases in adoption are observed with customer insights/analysis (46% in the coming 12 months versus 36% currently using) and programmatic marketing (34% vs. 24%).
With all the variety of marketing technologies available, DataXu says that some marketers are working with 10 or more specialized solutions. This has become a problem: a leading 23% of respondents in the US and Europe say that the largest current threat to their marketing team’s success is being stretched too thin due to working with and managing too many vendors. In fact, this is a bigger threat than rumors of reduction in budgets and of poor visibility into metrics.
Compounding the problem is that there are also advertising technology solutions to take into account. Across the entire sample, one-third of marketers feel that there is a distinct difference between martech and adtech solutions, though this is a less familiar refrain among marketers with larger budgets.
Nevertheless, most marketers expect to be dealing with solutions more in-house in the coming year: 59% expect to manage more of their martech in-house and 56% say the same about their adtech. The most common benefits for managing martech and adtech in-house are greater cost-effectiveness and transparency as well as better results on marketing campaigns.
It seems as though US marketers might want to take another look at the Chief Marketing Technologist role!
About the Data: The survey was carried out in May 2016 by Morar and Withpr on behalf of DataXu. There were 532 respondents in the US (174) and Europe (UK: 156; France: 52; Germany: 50; Spain: 50; and Italy: 50). Roughly three-quarters work with companies with 500 or more total employees, and a majority (57%) have annual marketing budgets of at least $750k.
