Revenue Is Why We Market?

Jan 21, 2015 by Mark Maier

If it wasn't to make revenue, why else would you market?  Call it what you will but at the end of the day Branding, Top of Mind Awareness, Display, Video, Text, Search, Cost Per Click....it is all about the metric of revenue in the end.  So it was nice to see some truthful survey results in regards to marketing in MediaPost...

"Revenue growth has become the top metric for marketers looking to quantify budgets. In fact, 32% of participants in a survey released Monday named revenue growth No. 1, followed by customer satisfaction at 30%, and return on investment at 23%.

CEOs have become more involved in marketing, requiring hard numbers to back campaign budgets. "Marketing is no longer a distribution of messaging," said Mike Lazerow, CMO at Salesforce. "Marketers now realize there's a person behind every app, but they need help connecting one-on-one with them, making it a reality."

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud 2015 State of Marketing Report analyzes responses from 5,000 global marketers about budgets, priorities, channels and metrics.

About 62% plan to increase budgets on search engine optimization and paid search, whereas 31% will decrease somewhat or substantially and 3% don't know. Content marketing will follow the same path, except 30% will decrease somewhat or substantially the budgets. Landing pages will get a 56% boost in budgets, whereas 37% will decrease somewhat or substantially, and 4% don't know.

Some 86% of senior-level marketers now recognize the need to create a cohesive customer journey across all channels, and 84% plan to increase or maintain marketing budgets in 2015. Social and mobile budget are at the top of the list to receive increases, per the study.  

About 70% of marketers plan to increase social advertising and social media marketing budgets, 27% YoY and 23% YoY increases, respectively. About 65% plan to spend more on mobile push notifications, a 32% YoY increase.

The study suggests that this year marketers will begin to use social in a new way. Last year, 66% primarily viewed social media marketing as indirectly impacting their business performance, whereas 64% now view it as a critical enabler of products and services.

The most pressing business challenges for marketers this year range from new business development at 27% and quality leads at 27% to remaining up to date on marketing trends at 27% and customer acquisition at 26%.

When asked what type of technology they will use to craft a customer journey, 50% of participants said mobile applications are very effective, compared with 27% somewhat, and 22% not very effective. Marketing analytics got similar ratings at 46%, 30%, and 23%."

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