On a regular basis, the research team at Salesforce surveys marketing leaders in a double-blind survey and produces a report of the findings called the State of Marketing.
This year’s is the sixth edition. With the survey completed in Q1 and the report published the start of June.
They do comment that the survey was done just as the COVID pandemic was unfolding. And they questions would the insights remain relevant. When they dug into the results, they decided they would. Because, marketing is about connecting with people, it is about continuous change and innovation, and about providing value. These things have been only heightened the pandemic, not made irrelevant.
I recommend giving it a read. If you have never looked at this report, it’s worthwhile. It’s even worthwhile to look back on previous years to see the progression of trends.
I could talk today about a half a dozen things in the report… but will focus on one insight in the report.
On page 8 they present a summary of the 5 top priorities of marketers, as well as the 5 top challenges.
What I found really interesting is that the top 2 on both lists are the same things. (though reversed order).
- Innovating
- Engaging in customers in real time
That is the nature of Marketing today. Our greatest challenge is the thing that we need to address as a priority. There is a need to connect with our customers across the full customer journey. And have that responsiveness happen as quickly as it can. The way we that requires that we may change how we do business, look at the tools we use, and leverage data and AI. We have to innovate.
That do you think? Is this a report that you find useful?
In this week’s blog post I challenge whether our business insights should be looking for answers or further questions. Both are valuable. Answers validate the hypotheses that we pose. Or we can dig a bit deeper to uncover further questions of where we can gain more insights.
