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Sales Promotion MarketWhat Marketers believe - and the facts. How close are they to each other 01/03/2010The DMA regularly carry out research into what marketers feel about the impact of various technques on recipients subsequent action. And then they find out what actually happens.
The differences are, as usual, much more useful than where they got it right, and there are more of them. This is a must read for agencies and clients not wanting to perpetuate the same mistakes again.
It is also worth looking at the Bahlsen case study
Bahlsen case study - On pack success
Social Media to become focus for marketers in 2010 25/02/2010Today Alterian (LSE: ALN) released the results of their seventh annual survey. The sample covered 1068 marketing professionals worldwide and found that 66 percent of respondents will be investing in Social Media Marketing (SMM) in the next 12 months. Of those investing in SMM 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities. This supports other statistics from the survey which found that the majority of respondents (67 percent) feel social media is either ‘increasingly important’ or ‘critical to success’.
Commenting on the survey results Alterian CEO, David Eldridge, said, “2010 marks the start of the digital decade for marketing. Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognise this. The one thing to remember, however, is that investment in Social Media Marketing is futile without adequate measurement.”
The survey found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools. This is a significant percentage considering the maturity of the channel and reflects the growing understanding that a social media marketing strategy needs to be based on listening to customers and prospects and its ROI needs to be measured. Eldridge continues, “Without the adequate investment in listening and measurement tools it renders any anticipated investment in social media ineffectual. The key to an effective social media strategy is listening.”
The survey went further to explore the extent to which organisations integrate marketing technologies across their organisation. Almost half of respondents (42 percent) said they don’t incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and email database. “This is a worrying statistic as it shows many organisations are losing any advantage that this valuable actionable insight could give them” adds Eldridge.
The research also explored the importance of customer engagement and found that over half of respondents (51 percent) are placing a ‘fair’ or ‘significant’ amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multichannel customer engagement – in fact only 7 percent are making no effort at all. Eldridge concludes, “Engaging with customers is becoming paramount and the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that don’t. Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. The easiest way to achieve this is by investing in Social Media Marketing and Social Media Monitoring, and by embracing the web.”
To obtain a copy of the full report of the Alterian Annual Survey results visit: http://www.alterian.com/resources/research.aspx
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Colin Harper Head of Insight at the ISP commented - sucess will ultimately be measured by the number of new, loyal, users that companies generate. There is no doubt that a fusion of effective promotion techniques with this kind of approach gives a simple means of directly measuring impact.
IPA Sales Promotion Budgets destined to grow 20/01/2010Marketing budgets should grow in 2010 after two years of cuts, according to the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether survey, with media channels that can offer better accountability – such as sales promotion – likely to reap the biggest reward.
Andy Viner, head of media at BDO, comments: "Unsurprisingly, companies are continuing to seek cost-effective and flexible options where the return on investment can be measured."
The Q4 2009 Bellwether figures show that the decline in sales promotion budgets continues to slow, improving to an index of -4.1 in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared with -13.7 for Q1 2009.
Budgets only grew for online advertising (+10.4 overall) and direct marketing (+2.2). Traditional media advertising saw an index of -6.9, and ‘all other’ was on -4.0. On average, the overall rate of decline in marketing spend has slowed to an index of -7.2.
Annie Swift, chief executive of the ISP, observes: “We would argue that actually our industry is doing even better than the Bellwether figures suggest, because its definition of ‘Sales Promotion’ is too narrow. We believe our members create content that changes behaviour and that can be delivered through a whole range of media, including direct marketing and online. By that interpretation, our industry is managing to increase its share of the total marketing spend significantly.”
The Bellwether index is calculated by comparing the percentage of marketers who said they had increased their budgets in the various areas with the percentage who said they had cut spend.
The outlook for 2010 appears much better: many respondents say they plan to increase their budgets in 2010, and companies were the most upbeat about the financial outlook for their industries since Q2 2005.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at research company Markit, which compiles the report, says: "With budgets being set higher for next year as confidence among marketing executives about financial prospects continued to improve, the Bellwether adds further confirmation that the UK economy has pulled out of recession. Companies clearly remain cautious about increasing spending in an uncertain economic environment, however, as the setting of marketing budgets remains far less buoyant than prior to the financial crisis."
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