2017 Benchmark Report: Marketers Optimizing for Mobile

Marketo’s “2017 Marketing Benchmark Report: North America” has found that marketers are implementing mobile marketing and optimization as a part of their multi-channel marketing strategies.

Nearly half of the respondents (42 percent) reportedly have a mobile-optimized website and many (26 percent) perform mobile advertising as a part of their strategy.

According to the researchers, marketers invest in marketing channels that are often served to and accessed by buyers on mobile devices. These channels include websites, email, field sales, events and paid search. “While marketers may not be specifically adopting and shaping their marketing strategies around mobile, their audience is.”

As a part of their multi-channel strategy, many marketers find success with digital advertising, especially PPC. The majority of marketers rank PPC as the most effective digital ad channel. That being said, marketers also invest in social advertising – over 25 percent of marketers spend more than a quarter of their marketing budget on social media ads.

Even though only a fraction of digital ad budget goes to social media because marketers allocate across channels, researchers “anticipate a shift over time as social media advertising offers more advanced targeting options and ad types.”

Marketers are also increasing their focus on content creation as content marketing investment rises. This survey found 68 percent of marketers publish content at least once a week. To demonstrate the ROI of their efforts, marketers are tying content performance to late stage metrics such as opportunities created (55 percent), conversions (52 percent), and revenue won (41 percent).

Marketers Predict Mobile and Social Growth in 2017

The “23rd Annual Market Survey” from AdMedia Partners found that the majority of marketers (78 percent) expect to see more than 10 percent growth in mobile spending and buying in 2017. An additional 71 percent said the same thing about social media.

According to researchers, “Digital services, such as programmatic, data/analytics and social, continue to generate strong interest and are viewed as disruptive.” For expansion opportunities, 50 percent of respondents are looking into social media marketing.