In rather unsurprising news, the thing brands are most concentrating on this year is upping their brand awareness, says a new report from cloud company Salesforce.
The company’s annual state of marketing report states 37 per cent of marketers say brand awareness will be the thing they’re focusing on most. Customer engagement was next at 34 per cent, followed by social media engagement at 26 per cent.
Of course, social media continues to an increasing investment for marketers. The report said 65 per cent of marketers are increased their spend in social media engagement this year – a largely unchanged percentage from the year prior.
Still, how marketers view success is through customer satisfaction.
“Marketing has always been about the customer – what’s changing is the way marketers view success,” said Lee Hawksley, senior vice president and general manager, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, JAPAC (pictured below).
“Our State of Marketing Report 2016 shows that customer satisfaction is the number one success metric for marketers today. This is The Age of the Customer – they are front and centre of every marketer’s agenda.
“The physical and digital worlds are merging, resulting in customers expecting personalised, consistent brand interactions across every channel and device. Marketers need to be the principal architects and ultimate owners of the entire customer experience.
“The rise of the connected customer is forcing marketing to evolve the way they think about traditional outbound campaigns. Successful marketers are focussed on delivering personalised experiences that engage the customer from day one on a seamless journey through the entire lifecycle.”
And those teams that have focused on the customer journey are the ones that are winning, despite ideas to the contrary that says there is no proper customer journey.
“High-performing marketing teams are 8.8 times more likely than underperformers to strongly agree that they’ve adopted a customer journey strategy as part of their overall business strategy,” said the report.
“Successful marketers are connecting with customers in new ways across mobile, email, social, and the Web. Seventy-three percent say that a customer journey strategy has positively impacted overall customer engagement — the second biggest priority for marketers this year.”
