Let’s Talk About the 2016 State of Marketing
By Heike Young
The 2016 State of Marketing Report came out last week. It’s a 60-plus-page survey of nearly 4,000 marketers about their top priorities, challenges, and best-performing campaigns for this year.
Check out what a few publications had to say about it:
- Adweek: 3 revealing GIF-powered data points about the current state of marketing
- Forbes: 2016 State of Marketing: High performing marketing teams 4.2x more likely to use analytics
- CMSWire: Salesforce: It’s raining ROI for digital marketers
- Diginomica: Salesforce State of Marketing 2016: It’s all about customer engagement
As you might’ve guessed, the report has a lot of data. That’s why we brought an expert onto the Marketing Cloudcast, the marketing podcast from Salesforce, to discuss the report’s key findings and highlight actionable insights for you.
Mat Sweezey, Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce, takes us through the report’s most important findings and shares next steps for marketers based on the data.
Are you to learn some all-new stats about marketing in 2016? Grab a cup of coffee and listen in.
You can download the episode for free now on iTunes or Stitcher. Don’t forget to snag a copy of the report or check out the interactive site as your companion to the episode—that way you can follow along with charts and stats.
Check out a preview of the episode here:
Here were a few of the top discoveries from our conversation with Mat.
Top marketing teams win with a customer journey strategy.
As the chart below shows, high-performing marketing teams are 8.8x more likely than underperformers to strongly agree that they’ve adopted a customer journey strategy as part of their overall business strategy. Seventy-three percent say that a customer journey strategy has positively impacted overall customer engagement.
Mat says a customer journey strategy doesn’t have to be exhaustive at first, but you definitely need to have a strategy.
Top marketing teams align with business leadership.
The world’s best marketing teams have buy-in from company leaders. As such, marketing budgets are more likely to be prioritized. Eighty-three percent of high performers say their executive team is completely committed to supporting the overall marketing strategy, compared to only 31% of underperformers. If you’re not working closely with execs to garner support for marketing projects, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.
Mobile momentum hits a tipping point.
With 98% growth in mobile app usage and 111% growth in SMS usage, a majority of marketers are now using these mainstream mobile tactics to engage customers.
From 2015 to 2016, every aspect of mobile usage covered in the State of Marketing rose significantly. This growth encompasses both mobile as a marketing platform (such as mobile apps) and mobile as a marketing channel (such as SMS).
Intelligent email is driving higher revenue.
Top teams are 4.2x more likely than underperformers to leverage predictive intelligence or data science to create personalized emails. As shown in the chart below, 49% of marketers say email is directly linked to their business’ primary revenue source — a notable jump from the 20% of marketers who said the same in 2015.
Social sees massive ROI growth.
Last year, three of the top five areas where marketers planned to increase their spending involved social outlets. Now, those investments appear to be paying off; 75% of marketing leaders report that social is generating ROI compared to just 29% last year.
What exactly do high-performing marketers do on social? One thing’s for sure: they respond to social interactions quickly, as shown by this chart.
Advertising accelerates on social platforms.
Nearly two-thirds of marketers are boosting budgets for advertising on social platforms in 2016, making it the third largest area for increased investment. Among high performers, 80% will increase spending on advertising on social platforms.
Content marketing is a primary business tool.
More than three-quarters of marketers (77%) now agree that content marketing is core to their business. Content marketing was a new area of study for the 2016 State of Marketing—proving this channel should be a part of your efforts if it’s not already.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg from our conversation about the report with Mat Sweezey! Get the full 2016 State of Marketing episode now on iTunes or Stitcher.
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Tweet @youngheike with marketing questions or topics you’d like to see covered next on the Marketing Cloudcast.
