CMOs to Focus on Digital Marketing, Existing Customers in 2018

Looking ahead to 2018, CMOs already have an idea of how they intend to spend their marketing budget, according to new research. A focus on existing customers, analytics and digital marketing is emerging.

Gartner recently released its “CMO Spend Survey 2017-2018: Budgets Recede Amid Demand for Results” report, providing a deep analysis how CMOs intend to utilize their budgets. The research showed that by a ratio of 2-to-1, they intend to focus on existing customers rather than customer acquisition.

In terms of the type of marketing CMOs are leaning toward, digital reigns supreme. About 67 percent stated that they will increase their spend on digital marketing in the coming months. In addition, 63 percent intend to decrease their offline spend.

Furthermore, they are shifting their greatest share of the budget (9.2 percent) toward analytics in the coming months. This is followed by web (9.9 percent) and digital advertising (8.6 percent) initiatives.

“Measurability is a contributing factor to digital media budget growth,” wrote the authors of the report. “CMOs’ focus on analytics reflects the need to demonstrate marketing and advertising performance and effectiveness to the business. Digital channels are purpose-built to feed CMOs’ metrics requirements, facilitating easy calculations in marketing program performance in terms of reach, engagement and conversion.”

The Shift Toward Mobile Marketing

Over the past year, marketers have been investing a large portion of their budgets in mobile initiatives, according to research.

Earlier this year, the “Mobile Marketing Trends 2017” report from MobileBridge found that 70 percent of marketers intended to “somewhat” or “significantly” increase their budgets to execute their mobile strategy.

About 90 percent of marketing mobile initiatives are geared toward existing customers, according to survey respondents.