Marketers Continue to Invest in Technology to Achieve Top Objectives
The “Marketing Technology Strategy” survey published by Ascend2 in August 2015 showed that although marketers are still struggling to get their hands on necessary tools, most are seeing a moderate level of technology-related success with their campaigns.
About one third (34 percent) of respondents said they don’t have all of the marketing tools they need or don’t fully utilize what they have. However, 73 percent said their marketing technology strategy is still “somewhat successful” or “very successful,” meaning they achieve their most important objectives.
Increasing sales revenue (52 percent), boosting lead generation (50 percent), and improving conversion rates (47 percent) are the top goals for marketers with an effective marketing technology strategy. Email marketing (82 percent), social media marketing (67 percent) and marketing analytics (60 percent) top the list of marketing technology being utilized to reach these goals. CRM/sales automation (54 percent), CMS/content management (52 percent) and search marketing (50 percent) are also popular among marketers.
More than half (55 percent) of the respondents said that technology is marginally improving their marketing performance, while 32 percent said it’s significantly improving their performance. Just 13 percent claimed that there has been no effect.
The Investment in More Technology
Previous research has shown that marketers have been planning to increase their investment in technology for months. A white paper released by Conductor at the beginning of 2015 showed that 37 percent of marketers intended to boost their technology spend by up to 25 percent. About 18 percent said they were going to increase their spending by between 26 and 50 percent.
At the time of the white paper’s publication, 65 percent of marketing executives claimed they intended to spend more money on technology in the coming year. Approximately 28 percent said they were going to spend significantly more within the next 12 months.