The Arktic Fox 2024 Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus study has revealed that many marketing and digital professionals are concerned about more than just the state of the economy.
Australia’s economy remains mixed. Labour and housing markets continue to run hot even as interest rates remain high, and increasingly stretched consumers keep tightening the purse strings, with predictable consequences for marketing budgets.
That’s posing challenges for many business functions. Marketers feel unprepared for looming Privacy Act reforms. Even more worryingly, they believe those in leadership positions are similarly unready – only 38 per cent of those surveyed believe their executive group understands the importance of adapting to privacy changes and sees it as a key strategic priority to address.
They also worry they are falling behind their peers in MarTech utilisation, partly because they lack appropriately skilled staff. On top of all that, many are now fundamentally questioning their MarTech investment strategy and moving towards combining ‘best of breed’ solutions rather than relying on a single vendor.
Now in its fourth year and formerly known as the Marketing State of Play study, the report, developed in conjunction with Six Degrees Executive and in partnership with Amperity, interviewed 250 marketing, digital and ecommerce leaders from a range of industries across Australia.
Marketers’ aspirations
Australian marketers’ focus remains business growth – 77 per cent of respondents said it was a key strategic priority. Growth is tied to customer acquisition, which came in second (48 per cent) on the list of priorities.
So far, so unsurprising. But subsequent priorities reveal marketers hope to fatten the bottom line by leveraging technology. The third most common priority (42 per cent) was “Building our customer data strategy and better utilising our first-party data”, and the equal fourth (36 per cent) was “Digital Transformation”.
The study also revealed marketers and digital leaders remain focused on achieving goals (over the next 12-18 months) that are only feasible with MarTech tools. Personalisation was classified as “important” or “very important” by 72 per cent of respondents, who were also strongly committed to CX management (87 per cent), online sales and lead generation (77 per cent) and MarTech utilisation (76 per cent). To put it bluntly, without sophisticated technology and skilled staff, most marketers and digital leaders won’t be able to implement their planned marketing and digital strategy over the next 12-18 months.
“Australian marketers want to take advantage of the available tools,” notes Billy Loizou, Asia Pacific Area vice president, Amperity (lead image). “The problem – as they are usually the first to point out – is Australian marketers are struggling to execute. That’s hardly a new situation, but when you add in factors such as the rise of Gen AI, imminent reforms to the Privacy Act, flat marketing budgets and Google deprecating third-party cookies, it’s not surprising so many CMOs are nervous”.
Marketers’ reality
Marketers want to – and increasingly need to – leverage technology effectively. Nonetheless, many fear they are falling behind. This was particularly apparent when leaders were asked about their organisation’s data maturity:
- Only 29 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement, “We are very effective at activating data to deliver great customer experiences.”
- Only 22 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement, “Our data is well managed and maintained, providing us with high-quality data.”
- Only 19 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement, “We have developed a unified view of the customer.”
Teresa Sperti, Director of Arktic Fox, is worried but unsurprised by these findings. “When we undertake digital training sessions or partner with clients on strategy, it’s not uncommon for us to have to explain to an organisation’s staff, including its senior staff, where the organisation’s data resides and help them connect the dots around their MarTech ecosystem,” she said.
“Brands have been trying to develop a unified view of the customer for at least two decades. Yet in 2024, less than one in five of those surveyed could say their organisation had developed a unified view of the customer that could underpin a data-driven marketing approach. This is why there is a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in spaces like personalisation, experience delivery and more. Brands that have built strong internal capabilities and robust foundations in data and tech are thriving whilst others are finding it difficult to shift gears”.
Sperti also warns that a casual approach to managing data and, in particular, privacy might result in more than suboptimal marketing outcomes. “Businesses could soon be suffering even more dire financial and reputational consequences for failing to appropriately safeguard their customers’ privacy,” she says. “A privacy or spam breach impacts reputation and trust, which is linked to brand performance and preference. So, I’m amazed there isn’t much more focus on improving compliance and ethics by marketers and digital leaders.”
Is it the machines or the humans?
There’s a consensus that Australian marketers and digital professionals aren’t making the most of MarTech solutions, but there’s debate about why that’s the case.
Those who question the tools point out marketers in many countries have failed to adopt MarTech solutions with the enthusiasm that was expected. Many CMOs appear to believe they overspent on technology and that investment has failed to meet their expectations and deliver the desired outcomes.
That’s partly due to the shortage of Australians with MarTech skills. But Loizou points out that the much-publicised skill gap doesn’t explain everything.
“To grossly oversimplify, the approach in the past was to buy the equivalent of a turnkey, off-the-shelf, full-stack solution from a big-name tech company. Given that 80 per cent of respondents in the 2024 study reported their utilisation of MarTech was ‘average’, ‘low’ or ‘very low’, that doesn’t seem to have worked out well. The understandable but ill-advised reaction is to devote fewer resources to MarTech and MarTech staff training. That’s happening to some extent, with only 12 per cent of respondents reporting they plan to significantly increase their MarTech budget over the next 12 months. But the noteworthy development is the declining popularity of single-vendor solutions. When asked about their plans for current and future MarTech investments, 14 per cent said they were leaning towards a single vendor, 29 per cent claimed they were open-minded, and a whopping 57 per cent stated they were leaning towards ‘best-of-breed’ solutions”.
The digital transformation landscape
Both Sperti and Loizou remain concerned about what they see as an overly relaxed approach to digital transformation. Noting that almost all organisations now talk the digital transformation talk, Sperti wonders how serious they are about walking the walk. “Only about one in five respondents said their organisation had been transforming for a “long time”, with long time defined as three or more years,” she says. “And about one in two respondents reported their organisation was just starting, or had only recently started, their digital transformation journey.
The study also found that only 53 per cent of leaders believe their executive group are aligned on digital transformation priorities.
“When brands aren’t aligned around digital transformation priorities, teams are set up to compete for resources and funding. That drives siloed thinking and that means it takes twice as long to deliver on ambitions. However, when executives lean into challenging discussions and make strategic choices, it enables the organisation to focus on the digital strategies that will deliver the most impact for the business and customers alike,” Sperti says
“With MarTech, the two big investment priorities for marketers remain CRMs (43 per cent) and marketing automation (41 per cent),” Loizou said. “It’s good that CDPs [Consumer Data Platforms] are now the number three priority (35 per cent), but I suspect many marketers still don’t fully comprehend how central CDPs are. The elevator pitch is that they allow marketers to improve the quality of their data, therefore an accelerator to fuel smart growth, retention, and foster a data-first corporate culture”.
Loizou doesn’t claim CDPs are a magic bullet. But he does insist that, unlike more popular solutions, they can address some of the pressing issues marketers now face.
“Just spending more on a marketing automation platform won’t solve messy customer data problems,” he said. “It’s CDPs that do that, as well as provide an enterprise-unified view, which then solves many of the other business-wide challenges organisations face. We live by the mantra better data = better results!”
