To say the past two years have been turbulent for marketers would be a serious understatement.
Agility, adaptability and continuous innovation are now the bets for marketing organizations of all sizes in every industry.
Delivering a great customer experience in this environment is a top priority for marketers today and the most prevalent challenge today. Marketing Trends for 2022 Reports from Oracle and Ascend2.
According to an Oracle survey of more than 850 marketing professionals in leadership and management roles, 94% believe their marketing efforts in 2021 will be successful, while 48% believe they will be very successful.
What challenges lie ahead and how do marketing leaders plan to meet them this year?
Read on to explore the top challenges and marketing solutions marketers have in mind, along with AI solutions they trust, how they plan to replace third-party data, and other key trends to inform your own marketing strategies.
Key challenges for marketers in 2022
Oracle’s survey shows the highest Marketing Challenge For current respondents:
- Maximize performance across channels – 38%
- Ability to change/adapt to circumstances as they arise – 36%
- Provide a great customer experience – 35%
- Coordinate marketing and sales efforts – 32%
- Segment and target audiences – 32%
- Extensions, content, ability to personalize – 31%
- Proven Marketing Attribution and ROI – 31%
Which performance metrics will matter most in 2022?
Data-backed insights are critical to addressing the above challenges.but which Performance Are marketing organizations now using to measure success?
Highly successful marketing organizations say their top performance metrics are:
- Sales and revenue attributable to marketing.
- Customer lifetime value.
- Cost of lead (CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA).
All other marketing organizations are more likely to track “marketing ROI” as well as customer acquisition and retention.
Marketing Solutions We Can’t Live Without
When it comes to the most important martech solutions Powering the modern organization, customer data platforms top the list.
Email marketing platforms, content management systems, marketing automation platforms, and testing and optimization tools round out the top five.
How marketers plan to replace missing third-party cookie data
When asked which first-party data sources would become most valuable after third-party cookies were lost, the top five selected by marketers were:
- 36%: Customer Purchase History
- 32%: Social media profiles
- 31%: Website registration
- 26%: respondents
- 26%: Mobile app usage
CRM and call center interactions, loyalty programs, user community members, newsletter subscribers, and SMS messaging also made the list.
AI will bring agility and ROI – at least for those who trust it
Adapting to situations as they arise and being able to change course on the fly is considered one of the biggest challenges, and this is where AI shines.
Even so, marketing organizations vary in their level of trust in technology.
Smaller marketing teams have less confidence in AI, with teams of 30 or fewer saying they only trust it to score leads and write subject lines.
Across the entire survey set, marketers most like to use AI for ad targeting, real-time content personalization, optimizing email sending, and estimating conversion rates.
When asked, which of the following activities would you trust (or already use) AI to do for you? Marketers responded:
Other key marketing insights for 2022
Among their more interesting findings, Oracle revealed:
- 37% of marketers are confident, 31% are hopeful, and 24% are excited about the opportunity for marketing success this year.
- 82% of marketers plan to make changes to their technology stack this year, adding, removing or replacing components.
- 24% of marketers say they absolutely cannot survive without a loyalty marketing solution.
- 40% of marketers want to add customer service insights and 36% loyalty insights to their marketing programs.
- 88% of marketers believe they will have access to the right data to make effective decisions this year.
download complete Marketing Trends for 2022 Report from Oracle for more information.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/BAIVECTOR
