Stressed out and overwhelmed by your job? You’re probably not alone. According to a new industry census, digital marketing managers are operating in under-resourced departments that often work in silos, and it’s negatively impacting their work.
The census, carried out by Marin Software and Censuswide, revealed that of the 200 UK marketers surveyed, 72% believe their job has become more complicated in the last year as they “grapple with fragmenting media channels and an avalanche of new data.”
67% said that online needs to be “better integrated” with offline marketing, while 66% said that more needs to be done to integrate different digital marketing disciplines – such as paid search, social, SEO and display – with each other.
In a bid to strengthen inter-departmental relationships, 54% said that they are already working closely with their IT department, and one in five are planning to do so in the future.
However, 26% also said that they are planning on hiring more people with data analysis skills.
34% said that their boss has a “poor understanding” of digital and does not invest in it sufficiently.
According to respondents, the top five priorities in 2015 are:
1. Better integrating our on and offline marketing efforts (46%)
2. Creating campaigns based on deeper understanding of audiences (41%)
3. Better integrating our digital marketing disciplines (37%)
4. Cross-channel digital marketing (35%)
5. Working more closely with our IT/tech team (29%)
Commenting on the findings, Jon Myers, vice president and managing director EMEA of Marin Software said: “As media has fragmented, so have marketing teams. Too often, we’re seeing collections of specialists working independently. This has to change. We know that marketers get the best results from their campaigns when they work in a joined up way and focus on the customer rather than just the click.
“That means following customer behaviour across multiple channels and joining these up to form a complete picture on which to build integrated campaigns. For example, our own research shows that users are twice as likely to convert when they click on both search and social ads as opposed to search ads alone. When you multiply this effect across all online channels, the results can be hugely powerful.”
