Delegate research conducted by Rakuten Marketing at this year’s Technology for Marketing & Advertising show reveals the plights of today’s marketers as time for strategy and measurement is wasted with supplier management

Today findings from Rakuten Marketing reveal that although half of marketers believe the most important job of a CMO in today’s multichannel environment is proving the ROI and efficiency of marketing, less than a quarter (23%) think this is what CMOs actually spend most of their time on. This highlights a huge disparity between business priorities and business realities.

Instead a fifth (20%) of CMOs are spending their days managing multiple suppliers and vendors, a task that only 6% of respondents believe should be their priority. In fact 60% of marketers surveyed liaise with up to five of these external vendors daily, highlighting how many suppliers they are juggling as part of their daily workload. Time used in vendor management, was to the detriment of marketing strategy, with just 16% of respondents believing that CMOs have time to prioritise defining top line marketing strategy. Other key demands on CMO’s time included managing brand consistency across channels (20%) and managing squeezed budgets (18%).

Results are top of the agenda

One third of marketers surveyed revealed one of their biggest obstacles is the challenge of proving the value of marketing and therefore getting adequate budget to fund it successfully. In addition over 85% of today’s marketers see multichannel marketing as “very valuable” and employ several digital channels for their marketing across display, affiliate, email, social, mobile and search.

However, despite this huge emphasis on multichannel marketing and the pressure to deliver ROI, very few marketers utilise cross-reference reporting and ROI across all of the channels they use. Only 22% measure ROI in this way. In fact over a fifth of organisations (22%) report separately on channels – with entirely different teams responsible for each channel.

Consistency in the customer journey

Nearly 40% of respondents surveyed said that the biggest challenge for marketers and advertisers is understanding the customer journey and controlling it across channels. Just 12% of marketers surveyed felt that they had the time and expertise needed to implement technology which provides consistent multichannel marketing.

Mark Haviland, MD of Rakuten Marketing Europe commented: “There’s no question that marketers are tested by the multichannel marketing environment, as well as the constant pressure to deliver results and ROI. The problem of attribution is a complex one and changing consumer behaviours mean that understanding the customer journey is increasingly difficult. Brands need to work with ad tech companies to simplify their lives and get a view of marketing spend across all channels at the same time. This way marketers can better see where their budget is going and make any necessary changes to ensure maximum ROI.”

– ENDS –
Notes to Editors

The survey was conducted in person at the TFM&A; 2014, with a total of 101 respondents surveyed.

About Rakuten Marketing

Rakuten Marketing provides advertisers and marketers with expert technology and services for affiliate marketing, retargeting, display, mobile, search marketing, lead generation, and automated product feeds. The company is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. As part of Rakuten, one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, Rakuten Marketing includes Rakuten LinkShare the #1 ranked performance marketing network, Rakuten MediaForge, a leader in retargeting and display recognised for its pay-for-performance consumer engagement business model, Rakuten Search a full service search engine marketing company, and Rakuten PopShops, a data analytics engine and product feed and deals content aggregator.

Contacts:

Beth Sissons

Hotwire

Beth.sissons@hotwirepr.com

020 7608 4670
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