Marketers might talk a good game but it seems beneath that tough exterior lies a gibbering wreck, with two-thirds of CMOs admitting they lack confidence in their ability to achieve their goals in the face of economic adversity and uncertainty.
So says a new study by CX management platform Sprinklr and the CMO Council, “Outsmart Adversity: Weathering Economic Headwinds and Emerging Poised for Growth”, which quizzed nearly 500 marketing leaders across industries and geographies in Q1 2023.
The report also finds that nearly 8 in 10 marketing chiefs express concerns around lack of investment or budget cuts and that challenges with executing data-driven marketing strategies contribute to their overall lack of confidence.
In fact, 78% of marketers don’t strongly feel that they can even convince the chief financial officer to invest in marketing and not cut the budget.
Facing budget challenges, a majority (68%) strongly agree that it is imperative for CMOs and chief information officers to collaborate this year to develop a competitive advantage with customer experience.
However, even among highly confident marketers, only 32% are very satisfied in their ability to leverage data and analytics. Among less confident marketers, this falls to 10%.
CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May said: “Marketers will have to build alliances with finance and IT to protect budgets and martech investments, and they’ll need to identify and shore up capabilities to build their confidence.
“These capabilities include gathering real-time insights that reveal how audiences really feel about your marketing on multiple channels, and then easily distributing this knowledge throughout the organisation.”
Even so, in the next 12 months, most marketers plan to create omnichannel customer experiences to help them emerge from economic uncertainty.
Sprinklr chief marketing officer Arun Pattabhiraman said: “In uncertain times, marketers face even more pressure to protect budgets and programmes by demonstrating clear ROI.
“As this research shows, marketers must embrace the opportunity to enhance the way they gather data, identify actionable consumer insights, and strengthen their engagement strategy across channels.”
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