As the industry prepares to meet potential economic headwinds, 66 percent of marketing leaders are just moderately confident or worse in their ability to achieve their goals amid economic adversity and uncertainty, according to CMO Council’s latest report. Moreover, 78 percent of marketers surveyed expressed concerns about the lack of investment or budget cuts. The report, dubbed “Outsmart Adversity: How CMOs Can Weather Economic Headwinds and Emerge Poised for Growth,” surveyed approximately 500 global marketing leaders.

When considering proactive solutions, the majority of them—68 percent—agree that it’s critical for CMOs to collaborate with CIOs to develop competitive customer experiences. That includes leveraging AI and data to become more predictive, articulating marketing’s value to impact revenue, and growing loyalty, retention and customer lifetime value through social and personalization.

Budgets

Though some marketing leaders lack confidence in dealing with economic uncertainty, deep budgets cuts are less of a concern, according to the report. Thirty-six percent of marketing budgets are increasing, compared to 33 percent decreasing and 31 percent staying the same. Similarly, martech investments are increasing for 36 percent of respondents.

Martech Investments

The report found that the top three marketing initiatives in the next 12 months entail orchestrating customer journeys to drive omnichannel experience (21 percent), drive customer acquisition and growth (20 percent) and leverage AI and data to scale analytics (17 percent). In terms of martech investments, these top four themes emerged: campaign execution and management platform, marketing automation platform, digital experience platform and customer data platforms.

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But there is good news on the horizon. Nearly two thirds of global marketers surveyed by the CMO Council in December and January said they plan to boost marketing spending in 2021. And just 10 percent plan to reduce. The study, called “Getting It Done in 2021,” surveyed approximately 200 members the CMO Council, a global network of senior marketing leaders, about their expectations for 2021 surrounding budgets, technology investments and organizational performance. Following are the key insights from the report.

*When it comes to investments, the report found that marketers will prioritize optimizing the customer journey, using data more effectively, extending marketing automation, increasing efficiencies and working closer with lines of business.

*Nearly two thirds (65 percent) of marketers intend to increase marketing spend in 2021. Just 10 percent will reduce budgets and 24 percent expect no change.

*Approximately 70 percent of marketers surveyed plan to invest in marketing technology to increase their companies’ effectiveness. When asked how investment will be applied, 53 percent said analytics, insights and intelligence; 36 percent said campaign executions; and 35 percent noted marketing operations. Customer experience and engagement will be a focus for 32 percent of marketers, and digital engagement will be for 26 percent.

*A quarter of marketers plan to downsize or restructure their organizations in 2021, compared to 64 percent who do not intend to downsize.

*The ways marketers plan to improve organizational performance in 2021 include working more efficiently with other teams (49 percent), lowering the cost of doing business (40 percent) and improving the targeting and localization of campaigns (36 percent).

Click here to view the report’s full infographic.

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