Marketing Teams Restructuring to Overcome New Challenges

The marketing landscape is changing at a breakneck pace and a new report finds marketing departments are beginning to reflect the shifting priorities within their teams. In fact, more than one-third of enterprise companies (38 percent) have restructured their marketing department to take on new marketing challenges.

The report, “A Study in Brand Transformation,” by Skyword and Researchscape International included 190 B2C and B2B enterprise marketing leaders across 40 industries.

The results revealed that technology is playing the biggest role in the future of marketing as nearly 60 percent of respondents adopted a new technology in the past year.

Additionally, 27 percent of respondents use anywhere between 4 and 10 technologies (21 percent use more than 11). Design software (52 percent), social media monitoring (51 percent) and analytics (47 percent) topped the list of most used tools.

The survey also uncovered a trend toward increased content marketing – 40 percent reported expanding their content marketing efforts over the last year. Video was the top content category at 49 percent, followed by blog posts (45 percent) and mobile applications (41 percent). Interactive and visual content – webinars, photography, infographics – also made the top 10.

More traditional marketing content, such as e-books and whitepapers, were not among the top 10 tactics, the survey revealed.

“The research results show that marketers are laying the foundation of digital transformation. They are just beginning to shift their resources away from traditional interruptive marketing to sustained storytelling and publishing,” said Patricia Travaline, CMO of Skyword.

This shift is also reflected in the composition of marketing teams. About 30 percent of marketing teams included in-house roles like editor, content marketer, and copywriter.

Content Programs Are Expanding

This new report echoes recent research by Marketwired that indicated 64 percent of marketing and public relations professionals intend to increase their efforts in content marketing in the coming year. Already, the survey found, 79 percent had a content marketing program in place.

The most commonly employed content tactics were blog posts (55 percent), photos (29 percent) and news releases (24 percent), the research revealed. About 77 percent stated that they believe in the importance of measuring their content efforts.