Eight out of ten marketers say they expect to see either little to no growth in their budgets or an actual decline in 2010. Marketing will be under pressure to deliver in 2011 with less.
New focus on corporate budget cuts has changed to a demand for sales growth, and to achieve that goal, marketers must transform their communications to address consumer mindset shifts, often with flat or declining budgets.
The marketing function will “fundamentally change during the next five years” because of the battering consumers have taken in the economic downturn, with the biggest changes coming in the areas of:
- Product quality
- Value
- Price
- Customer service
Accenture Marketing’s Onward and Up report presents a snapshot of consumers who expect to spend less and get more, want their interactions with providers to be efficient and convenient, are increasingly diverse, and are harder to reach and keep. Marketers see the three most important business issues as improving customer retention and loyalty, acquiring new customers and increasing sales to current customers.
The greatest increase in focus and investment will be developing innovative offerings, entering new markets or segments, building brand image, improving pricing, and developing customer data management systems.
Marketers will be under great pressure to not only deliver innovation, but results, more efficiencies and more measurement. Marketing is the last division to come under the same scrutiny and measurable standards that other divisions have long been forced to deliver.
So what can you do?
- Invest in consumer insights. Conduct a broad consumer study to fuel your knowledge with marketplace perceptual maps, consumer segmentation and consumer need states. You need to better understand your consumer and marketplace in order to stake your claim and develop a true soulmate consumer relationship.
- Invest in new product development. Identify consumer unmet needs through ethnography and spend a half-day every quarter working on new product ideation.
- Start to measure. There is not a perfect solution yet. Chad Mitchell from IBM spoke at the Integrated Marketing Summit recently, where I also presented. Chad noted the reality that there are so many influences on consumer purchase behavior that it is almost impossible to isolate contributing factors. But we must try. Start with a monthly Dashboard and pull in key sales, awareness study, online, social and PR learnings into one place. Then set up a full day meeting each month with your core team to review and respond.
The marketers who invest in consumer insights, innovation and measurement will be the brands that come out on top.
