With the U.S. economy starting to re-open following the height of the coronavirus pandemic, what does this mean for marketing? Are companies continuing to hunker down? Or are they getting back to business? This is important to know both as a benchmark and for competitive insight. If your competitors are back to marketing full steam, you don’t want to give them an edge because you’re still sitting on the sidelines.
A strategic brief from the CMO Council, “Getting It Done in 2021,” gives us some critical insight. The survey found that, despite a challenging year in 2020, nearly two-thirds of CMOs plan to increase their marketing spend this year. But they aren’t just throwing their budgets any old which way. They are being strategic.
According to the CMO Council, marketers are focusing their budgets on the following areas:
- Customer journey, acquisition, and conversion (50%)
- Planning around digital growth strategies (36%)
- Campaign execution and measurement (35%)
- Demand generation and pipeline (32%)
- Taking action on customer data insights (26%)
In other words, they are marketing smarter, not harder.
Want to stay competitive? Do the same. Focus your efforts on understanding your customers. What priorities, needs, and fears are driving their purchase decisions? How do they make those decisions and what types of content (and which channels) do they use along the way? Spending money on your marketing database may not seem as important as getting those direct mail pieces and emails out there, but it just might be the most important investment you make this year.
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