Customer Experience (CX) has emerged as the biggest opportunity identified by Australian businesses (51 per cent), ahead of content marketing (42 per cent), big data (38 per cent) and social media (33 per cent), according to the 2016 SMG Media Futures Report.
Remarkably though, only six per cent of respondents believed they were implementing CX strategies successfully.
“Marketers are looking to agency partners to provide solutions, with 61 per cent looking for data capabilities and 52 per cent for technology capabilities from their partners.
“Not surprisingly, both marketers and media have signalled they are committed to investing in infrastructure, particularly people and skills (78 per cent) this year and into 2017,” said SMG CEO Chris Nolan.
Marketers said they will focus most on investing in owned assets such as websites (67 per cent) and data management platforms (61 per cent), while media said they would invest in personalisation, mobile and data.
Marketers also identified the biggest growth in spend on channels most identified with CX: social media (up 11.6 per cent), online video (up 11.6 per cent) and mobile (up 8 per cent).
“2018 will be an inflexion point where industry growth will be driven by mass addressable media,” said Nolan.
At the other end of the scale, respondents said spend on magazines would be down 7.1 per cent and newspapers would be down 4.4 per cent. This compares with total spend for 2016 predicted to rise by 2.8 per cent.
Outdoor and digital will invest a combined $100 million in transforming its mass offerings into digitally enabled experience channels.
“Digital powered TV and outdoor will allow marketers scalable control of their customer experience and we believe we will see a resurgence of investment—up to double digit growth—in these platforms,” said Nolan.
But marketing and understanding consumers doesn’t always come naturally for everyone. If that’s the case for you, or you’d like to sharpen up your skills, check out ADMA‘s snazzy range of courses. 
