We love a good survey at Brightcove, so we were very interested to see a recent study conducted by the CMO Survey, and also highlighted on Forbes.com, that asked marketing leaders to "rate your company's marketing excellence", among other questions. On paper, the "rate your awesomeness" question may sound a bit vague but when you apply that data to other portions of the survey it points to some interesting trends that we certainly see in our own customer base.
Marketing excellence scores were ranked on a 7 point scale, with the mean score amongst responders coming out to a 4.4
The survey also asked for insights on performance, spending, strategy, leadership and organizational choices / outcomes that are correlated with marketing excellence. Christine Moorman from Forbes.com then put respondents into two groups to analyze these results -- the high-performing group which had a mean marketing excellence score of 5.52, and the low-performing group which had a mean score of 3.22. Then she looked at the differences.
Moorman found that excellent marketing companies reported less spend on traditional advertising and more spend on digital marketing. And excelllent companies spend more on social media as a percent of their current marketing budgets and also more effectively integrate social into their overall marketing strategy. Lastly, excellent companies spend more on marketing analytics and use marketing analytics to make decisions in a higher percentage of projects.
Moorman argues that excellent marketing companies in turn outperform low ranking companies in profitability / ROI and key customer metrics (customer acquisition, retention and brand value).
The CMO Survey data aligns nicely with recent data we've seen from our friends at Aberdeen Research around best-in-class organizations and their digital marketing strategies. The fact remains that the best of the best are doing everything they can to enhance their digital presence, including investing heavily in online video and social media, to foster brand awareness and customer engagement.
We are lucky to work with hundreds of these best-in-class marketers, and witness firsthand the innovative ways they are using video and rich media in their marketing efforts. We look forward to seeing more data that proves they are on the right track!
