Accenture study says there will be more change than ever in marketing functions, and that the biggest changes will be:
- Using data and analytics to improve marketing impact
- Making more or better use of digital channels
Last month Accenture published a study of global marketing. Here are the biggest takeaways for engineering marketers:
- 78% of all respondents, the highest rate ever, said that the marketing function will fundamentally change in most organizations over the next five years
- The biggest areas of change in achieving marketing results will come from: i) using data and analytics to improve marketing impact and ii) Making more or better use of digital channels
- The biggest barrier to improved performance in marketing in 2014 was a lack of critical technology or tools
- The questions that Accenture asked about the areas of change tell you a lot about how they see the future. Here are the questions, ranked in order of agreement by the survey respondents:
- Analytic skills will be a core competence of marketing
- Digital budgets will account for over 75% of the marketing budget
- Mobile will account for over 50% of the marketing budget
- Marketing will become more of an on-demand information provision function
- Marketing, Sales and Customer Service will be merged into a single function
The survey covered more B2C marketers than B2B, and had a worldwide geographic reach, so not all of the responses will apply to all of us. But the insights make it pretty clear that a future CMO is going to have to be:
- Technology savvy. Understands data flows and systems architecture
- Analytical by nature. Can you calculate CPCs in your head?
- Data driven. Time to brush up on pivot tables.
- Digital native. Has followers on social media.
- Domain competent. Comfortable describing highly technical processes
- Great storyteller. Capable of generating on-demand information
Does that sound like your CMO?
John
