State of Marketing 2014

Not to worry, the global marketing economy is robust and picking up pace, according to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council’s eighth “State of Marketing” report, which was released today. And more importantly, chief marketers are confident that they can meet management’s revenue and market share goals for the coming year.

A surprising 81 percent of the 525 global marketers surveyed by the CMO Council believe management mandates for top-line revenue growth and market share are realistic and attainable in 2014. However, only 26 percent report they are halfway toward achieving these goals. The encouraging outlook from the world’s top marketers includes a number of important indicators, among them:

•     Some 55 percent plan headcount additions compared to 22 percent who expect reductions.
•     Fifty-four (54) percent of marketers expect budget increases, and 27 percent believe their budgets will stay the same.
•     Just 10 percent of marketing leaders polled believe their jobs are at risk or on the line this year.
•     Seventy-five (75) percent of senior marketers received a salary increase or bonus in the past year, and 83 percent believe this will happen in the next fiscal year if they perform well.
•     Sixty-nine (69) percent say they are trusted strategic members of the C-suite and/or increasing their stature and credibility with key business leaders.

The “State of Marketing” study, sponsored by NetBase and Infor, provides an in-depth view of global marketing vitality and direction. The benchmark report serves as a valuable resource and reference for the CMO Council’s 7,000 members in 110 countries, who collectively control more than $400 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures.

 “A big benefit to marketers is the growing level of collaboration and interaction with functional heads and line-of-business leaders,” notes Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. “This is giving marketing more weight in strategic decision-making and also ensuring organizational alignment around the customer experience given marketing’s increasing ownership of customer data and insight.”

Some 30 percent of survey participants say today’s CMO is equal to other C-level peers while another 45 percent feel that this is only sometimes the case. Only 20 percent believe that the CMO is not equal to other C-level decision-makers in terms of status and influence.

The report also revealed that CMOs are most inclined to partner and interact with chief financial officers (58 percent), chief information officers (53 percent) and chief sales officers (51 percent). Increasingly, they are aligning with chief HR officers, chief operating officers (40 percent) and, to a lesser degree, chief procurement officers (15 percent).

While 63 percent of marketers rate the contributions of their agency partners as extremely valuable or pretty good, 66 percent are planning to make one or more changes to their agency roster in 2014. Lack of business results, value-added thinking and uninspired creative top the list of reasons for these changes.