According to a recently released infographic from CMO Council that was featured on MarketingProfs, more than 100 senior marketers (CMOs, SVPs of Marketing, etc.) indicated that improving go-to-market processes and digital marketing capabilities are top priorities for 2019. According to the infographic, 40% of all respondents said that improving their go-to-market processes and digital marketing efforts were their top priority, and 33% said finding new sources of revenue and improving retention/monetization.

However, 43% of respondents identified their biggest challenge in optimizing digital marketing efforts as a lack of skills within their organization. 40% said that not having unified data across all marketing systems/platforms was their biggest obstacle. To address these obstacles, 74% of respondents stated that they would encourage knowledge transfer and peer engagement, whereas 53% said they would add new resources, and only 47% said they would bring in consultants.

What is surprising about these results is the path that respondents are going to take to meet that goal. With 43% of survey respondents feeling that there was a lack of skills within their organization, it’s notable that marketing leaders felt that they could overcome that obstacle by encouraging knowledge transfer and peer engagement. Yet, if a team lacks the skills to navigate the challenging and tumultuous waters of digital marketing, how can leaders expect knowledge transfer within that team to help improve digital marketing capabilities?

“However, 43% of respondents identified their biggest challenge in optimizing digital marketing efforts as a lack of skills within their organization.”

If marketing leaders take this approach, they will be setting up their teams for, at best, half optimized campaigns that aren’t maximizing their ROI and fully achieving organizational goals. At worst, they’ll be setting up their people and themselves for failure. The tools marketers have at their disposal are nuanced and can be complicated. Never before have we had tactics that can provide so much valuable data and insights. If a marketing department doesn’t understand how to use these tools and uncover data trends using their full capacity, then no amount of in-team knowledge transfer will help.  

Some more effective ways to empower marketing teams to improve and learn new skill sets that closely align with organizational goals could be:

• Conferences & seminars

• Hiring new employees who specialize in specific digital marketing efforts

• Consulting with specialists

• Partnering with a third party to augment teams

All of these avenues offer current employees access to experts within the digital marketing field that will provide them with actionable insights and information that can be leveraged within teams to further their digital strategies. At that point knowledge transfer should not only be encouraged, but a best practice.

Lastly, another insightful takeaway from this infographic is the 40% of respondents who stated not having unified data across all marketing systems and platforms was their biggest obstacle. Consider these stats from a Dun & Bradstreet survey of 250 B2B professionals:

• In 2018, 89% of respondents stated that data quality was increasingly important to the sales and marketing organization (63% stated it was extremely important)

• Confidence in data has reached a new low, with only 51% saying they’re confident in the quality of their sales and marketing data

• 88% of B2B marketers believe data quality is important to executing an ABM strategy

Good data allows Senior Leadership to determine what’s working, what’s not, and more importantly, to uncover valuable insights into an audience. The better the data, the more prepared leaders are to create a strategy that best reaches the targeted audience. As marketers continually look for ways to measure their effectiveness, it’s equally important to ensure data is accessible quickly and effectively.

Do you have questions about how you can improve your digital marketing efforts or gain better insights within your data? We’re happy to help!