Survey: Half of Marketers Struggle to Understand Customer Journey

Understanding a customer’s omnichannel journey remains a challenge for marketers.

The third annual “Getting Digital Right” study conducted by Millward Brown Digital found more than half (55 percent) of marketers are not confident in their organization’s understanding of the customer journey.

The data revealed part of the struggle is integrating digital strategies into overall brand strategies; 26 percent of marketers indicated they are not doing this and one-third are struggling to create a seamless experience across digital channels (desktop, mobile, social).

Furthermore, driven by a need for greater insights, brands, agency and media marketers all expect research budgets to increase over the next three years. Marketing tools that determine ROI, offer behavioral insights and reveal advertising effectiveness are expected to increase in use, the survey found.

Over the past year, marketers, particularly in-house marketers, have grown more confident in using big data insights. A year ago (2015), 14 percent of organizations were confident in their use of big data, now (in 2016) 41 percent say they are confident. About 60 percent of media and agency marketers are confident in their ability to harness big data for actionable insights.

For the majority of marketers, the ability to track ROI in digital and cross-channel efforts is a reason to increase spend in that particular channel.

“This year’s study shows promising improvement in a few metrics, but highlights that our industry has work to do to maximize opportunities to better understand consumer behaviors and the moments where marketers can best engage,” said Stephen DiMarco, President, Millward Brown Digital.

CMOs Seek to Connect Efforts’ Impact on Customer Journey

Identifying, measuring and reporting on the marketing team’s impact across the buyer’s journey is among the top concerns of CMOs, according to a recent survey by Leapfrog. CMOs indicated they wanted to find ways to connect diverse sources of customer data to interactions with the brand.

Building digital marketing solutions for consumer engagement and conversion was a top challenge named by CMOs, as well as the need to personalize the customer experience. Leveraging insights and analytics to better understand what drives acquisition, retention and loyalty was another top issue for the top marketers surveyed.