If asked to define the marketing department's role, an outdated response might be: 'they do the comms - posters and brochures.' Successful marketers have a firm grasp of their customer base with pivotal concurrent roles both inward and outward in an organisation. Creative and intelligent, they are responsible for developing impactful propositions, meeting customer needs and are amongst the most effective at marshalling and enthusing a firm's innovations, capabilities and resource.
As Nick Turner, Partner in Deloitte's Marketing & Insight practice, surmises: 'It is this group that are charged with fuelling economic growth,' and this is precisely why the attitude and sentiment of the UK's marketing community should not be ignored.
With this in mind, Deloitte, led by Nick Turner, and Forbes have actively supported the launch of The Chartered Institute of Marketing's (CIM) Marketing Confidence Monitor. CIM launched this quarterly survey in October 2012, with the second wave's results published this week. In short, the UK's marketing community is asked, how confident are you within your industry?
Feedback and industry attention in the monitor is positive and growing, with over 1,300 responses from marketers in wave two, up from 1,200 in October. The online survey takes about 10 minutes and targets marketing professionals across industry sectors including B2B, B2C and non-profit, with results presented in reports, videos and infographics.
Taking a moment to examine the four key metrics that influence the monitor's index score, it becomes clear why this is a unique measure. The research is based around four key issues: career prospects, marketing investment, meeting growth targets, and confidence in economic growth and performance.
What's the news in wave two?
There are some fascinating outcomes published in the report, some
more expected than others. Highlights include:
- Overall marketing confidence is up over one per cent.
- Over half of UK marketers express a lack of confidence in government plans to increase jobs and UK economic growth (this remained particularly unchanged since last October).
- Small businesses report the highest levels of confidence in career prospects, almost 10 percentage points higher than large businesses.
- Positively, almost half of marketers across all sectors expect planned marketing spend to remain unchanged over the next three months.
- Respondents in the banking and financial services sector were amongst the least confident, whilst manufacturing and construction positively outperformed the UK average.
- 60% of marketers report a low risk to their job security, though concurrently 60% also expect a low likelihood of promotion this coming year.
What does this mean for marketers?
The report identifies key marketing priorities for marketers to invest in over the next quarter. Top of this list, identified by 21% of marketers, is strengthening digital marketing capabilities. Developing stronger market and customer insight was the second most named priority, by 20% of marketers. And improving strategy formation and planning was the third most popular marketing priority.
The three lowest priorities were improving marketing talent attraction, development and retention; improving speed of execution and responsiveness; and leveraging new marketing systems and technologies.
The findings from this report present a barometer of marketing sentiment – a useful measure of how closely your strategies and opinions are aligned with those of the industry.
To read highlights of Marketing Confidence Monitor - Wave 1, please click here.
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