• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 15, 2023

The CMO Council in partnership with Sprinklr released a report Monday showing that two in three marketers lack confidence in their ability to achieve goals in the face of economic adversity and uncertainty.

The study -- Outsmart Adversity: How CMOs Can Weather Economic Headwinds and Emerge Poised for Growth, fielded in the first quarter in 2023 and based on nearly 500 marketers -- found that eight in 10 marketers were concerned about the lack of investment or budget cuts. Challenges with executing data-driven marketing strategies contribute to the lack of confidence.

The data shows that 36% of marketing budgets will increase this year, compared with 33% that will decrease, and 31% that will remain the same.

CMOs and CFOs are doing a better job of aligning on important metrics such as customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.

While marketers say they clash with the CFO in terms of the budget to test products -- because testing doesn’t always show a return on investment -- about 60% of marketing leaders say they are able to convince the CFO to invest and not cut the budget.

That effective relationship with the CFO does not always extend into information technology (IT), although it is required to maintain a strong marketing tech stack.

Only 23% of marketing leaders say they have a very effective relationship with IT, according to a CMO Council report.

The survey found that two in three marketing leaders strongly agree that it’s imperative for CMOs and CIOs to collaborate this year to develop a competitive advantage with user interfaces.

Three “extremely important” capabilities in overcoming economic adversity and uncertainty included leveraging data and analytics to become more predictive, articulating the value of marketing and its potential to impact revenue, and growing loyalty, retention, customer lifetime value (LTV) through social care and personalization.

Only 34% of marketers are very satisfied in their ability to leverage data and analytics, and among less confident marketers, this percentage falls to 10%.

The big picture is that the vast majority of marketers have an opportunity to improve -- but they will need to overcome manual error, speed the data-collection process, reconcile and synthesize data from across multiple channels and sources, creating a comprehensive view of data.

Some 54% of highly confident marketers say they are very satisfied in their ability to articulate marketing’s value to impact revenue, but only 14% of less confident marketers say the same thing. Marketers need to close this massive gap.

The study suggests that marketing attribution, which has become easier to do as the pandemic has eased, sent nearly every customer to digital channels where engagements could be tracked, measured and optimized.