Key insights from Salesforce's State of Marketing report

Imarc keeps tabs on major marketing trends and data. One resource we always find to be extremely useful is Salesforce's State of Marketing report. As usual, this year's has some strong takeaways for marketers and Brands.

Today we're sharing some of the key insights along with our thoughts on how you can best utilize them.

Brands

When we say "on-Brand," we mean the visual and written creative showcases the Brand core values accurately.

Brand core: A Brand's purpose, vision, mission, and values that come together and help it grow.

According to the report, "Eighty-five percent of marketers say their external messaging reflects corporate values."

Knowing that almost all marketers feel their communications are accurate to their values is wonderful, but that still doesn't mean they're fully on-Brand.

Values matter, especially when a Brand actively demonstrates them, but the real question to ask is do consumers agree with your marketers' assessments? Do they feel your core is being properly projected and executed on? A strong Brand must use its core internally and externally to guide everything that they do.

Consumers

Priorities

Surveyed marketers are saying that “experimenting with new marketing strategies” is their number two priority.

Key statistic: 91% of CMOs say they must continually innovate to remain competitive.

What does that mean for your organization? You can't become stale. You must try new things to remain competitive, even if you're marketing a legacy product.

Struggle

People want more than ever from companies. In fact, "Seventy-one percent of marketers say that meeting customer expectations is more difficult than a year ago." One solution to this is to really listen to your key demographic and provide them with helpful solutions. Don't just assume that solutions that worked last year are still helpful, stay in the inquiry and engage for long-term success.

Trust

"88% of customers believe that trust becomes more important in times of change." That's why trust building ranked in the top three priorities of Salesforce's surveyed CMOs. How do you build trust?

Understand your consumers–"73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations." To do this, 83% of marketers are taking advantage of dynamic customer insights. Smart.

Clarify and project values–This goes back to the Brand core. People want to buy from Brands they align with. To that end...

• "66% of customers have stopped buying from a company whose values didn’t align with theirs."
• "88% of customers say they expect to see brands demonstrate clear and strong values."
• "93% of high-performing marketers say their external messaging reflects their corporate values compared to 70% of their underperforming competition."

Data

Reliance

As of this report, "75% of marketers say they rely at least in part on third-party data." This presents major issues for marketers when it comes to privacy and the use of cookies. From here, a strong strategy focused on first-party data will be more important than ever.

Key statistic: 68% of marketers say that they have defined a future strategy that will help them move away from third-party data usage.

Unified data

Salesforce's report noted, "31% of B2B marketers say that sharing a unified view of customer data across business units is a challenge, and 62% of business buyers say it generally feels like they’re communicating with separate departments, not one company." This disparate experience is at the center of many marketing issues including sub-part personalization that is being based on inaccurate data.

Key statistic: "Compared to 61% of underperforming marketers, 72% of high-performing marketers are able to analyze marketing performance in real-time."

Manual work

Shockingly in 2023, "33% of marketers still say their marketing attribution is a manual process."

This time-consuming activity is an ongoing headache and clearly an area that needs further attention and investment. Especially since "marketers cite measuring marketing ROI/attribution as their #2 challenge."

Imarc works to streamline attribution reporting by using comprehensive reporting dashboards in tandem with regular check-ins from our account management team members. If you don't have dashboards, reach out to us and we'd be happy to help you set them up!

Email

Email usage is increasing every single year. Per Salesforce it now accounts for "80% of all outbound messaging." As such marketers need to have a tight plan for their outbound marketing engagement.

Are you making the most of your email marketing? Part of our agency work is to help our clients craft engaging emails that resonate with their customer values.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Salesforce said, "68% of marketers say they have a fully defined AI strategy." It seems obvious, but that means that there are still 32% who don't.

While you definitely don't need to integrate AI into all of your processes, you should do an intake on its uses to see if one or two may be beneficial to your overall strategy.

B2B

Closing loops

"89% of B2B marketers are using an account-based marketing (ABM) platform to deliver a unified end-to-end experience" because the expectation is now a completely seamless experience complete with personalization. Meeting that expectation is now expected, not aspirational.

The future

The only constant in life is change, and in marketing, change happens fast and frequently. And as those changes continue to unfold, upskilling is needed to remain competitive.

Of the most important skills, Salesforce reports that over the next two years, marketers would most like to improve in the following areas:

• Content marketing
• Campaign strategy
• Creativity
• Data analytics
• Communication

The pattern is clear – the upskilling areas align directly with the trends above. To earn success, hire, retain, and upskill content marketing, campaign strategy, creative, data analytics, and communication experts so that they can assist you with informed B2B campaigns, outbound emails, data analysis and reporting, consumer-centric content, and Brand work.

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What's driving your 2024 strategy? Would you like some help? Let's talk.