About the census

Marin Software commissioned independent market research company Censuswide to survey 200 UK digital marketing managers in October 2015. The respondents all work in companies with an annual turnover of at least £20 million.

About the respondents

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Increased spend = increased complexity

According to the latest IAB digital spend figures, digital advertising in the UK was worth £3.975 billion in H1 2015, up 13.4% on a like for like basis from £3.507 billion in H1 2014. Our DMM respondents are in the front line in managing this, and the census reveals that nearly three quarters (73%) believe their job has become more complicated in the last 12 months, a slight increase on 2014.

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Digital spending gap

Yet, the increase in spend has not gone far enough according to our respondents. 61% of said more money should be shifted from offline marketing to digital marketing, up 27% from 2014. Just 35% think their organisation has the right balance between on and offline spend.

Compared to digital/online marketing,do you think offline marketing receives a higher share of budget, relative to the returns delivered to the business?

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A wider look at how advertising spend compares to media consumption patterns in the UK seems to suggest they have a point. The latest figures show 49% of all UK adult media consumption is via digital channels, yet just 46% of the UK’s £15.7bn total annual ad spend goes on digital.

UK media consumption vs. advertising spend

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The gap is even more pronounced when it comes to mobile (smartphones and tablets). The average time spent per day on mobile is 146 minutes, or 25% of all media consumption. Yet mobile ad spend at £1,625m is only 10% of all ad spend. And, the amount of time UK adults spend daily with mobile devices is expected to surpass the amount of time spent online via desktop and laptop computers this year.

Lack of senior marketer digital buy-in

The respondents suggested part of the reason for the digital spending gap was a lack of digital understanding from marketing leaders. 39% of respondents said their most senior marketer tended to “say it’s important but not understand it fully” when it came to digital. And 62% of respondents said their most senior marketer didn’t allocate sufficient resources to digital.

Thinking about the most senior marketer in your organisation (e.g.Chief Marketing Officer or Marketing Director), in your opinion, which of the following best describes their understanding of digital marketing?

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Companies who have a prominent senior marketer who fully understands digital could stand to benefit when it comes to attracting top talent. 85% of respondents said that if they were to move jobs, a recognisable senior “digital champion” would be a major draw for them.

Despite this, a slightly contradictory picture emerged when we asked our DMMs what skills they think CMOs need to be most effective. Digital skills appear relatively low down the list, including “Being data driven” (7th) and “technology orientated” (9th). This could, of course, reflect a sense that senior people need not necessarily understand the nuts and bolts of digital marketing, but should nonetheless resource specialist marketers further down the chain sufficiently.

Thinking about the most senior marketer in your organisation (e.g.Chief Marketing Officer or Marketing Director), which skills are the most important to them carrying out their job effectively?

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Mind the skills gap

The continued lack of talent with the necessary technical skills to help companies compete in the digital marketing area remains a challenge. 66% said, “As a department we have struggled to access talent with the required tech skills over the last 12 months.” The vast majority (59%) say they are planning on hiring in 2016, meaning the war for talent shows no sign of abating in 2016.

Based on your 2015 workload and results,do you think you will be looking to invest in hires in 2016?

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A cursory look at Google trends also shows that interest in specialist roles, such as data scientist, has never been higher.

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More joined-up working needed

Despite industry-wide calls for more joined-up working within marketing teams, much more still needs to be done.

69% say online needs to be better integrated with offline marketing, and almost two thirds (64%) say more needs to be done to integrate different digital marketing disciplines – such as paid search, social, SEO and display – with each other.

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Which of the following best describes the way different digital marketing disciplines (e.g. PaidSearch,Social MediaAdvertising,SEO, Display etc.) are organised within your company?

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Top five priorities in 2016

The priorities of DMMs have shifted over the last 12 months, pointing to an increasing desire to operate more effectively across channels in order to better reach the audiences which matter. The top priorities for 2016 are:

1. Campaigns based on deeper understanding of audiences (up one place from 2014)
2. Effective scaling of campaigns across social media channels (new entry in the top five)
3. Cross-channel digital marketing (up two places from last year)
4. Better integrating of online and offline marketing efforts (new entry in the top five)
5. Better integrating of digital marketing disciplines (down one place)

Conclusion and forecast

This year’s census reveals digital marketing managers feel much more could be achieved for their organisations if more money were switched from offline to online channels. Our own analysis shows there is undoubtedly a “digital spending gap,” which is most pronounced when it comes to mobile.

That such a gap exists is perhaps not, in itself, surprising. People’s media consumption patterns have been transformed in recent times and the pace of change has accelerated in recent years with the meteoric rise of mobile devices.

We expect the digital spending gap to close in the coming 12 months, particularly as many channels traditionally seen as “offline,” such as TV, become increasingly digitised and are traded programmatically. Mobile ad spend is only going in one direction and we are expecting it to overtake desktop by end of 2015.

This year’s census also reveals continuing frustrations about the lack of joined up thinking within marketing organisations. This is by no means a new problem – it was highlighted last year as well, though not to the same extent. Part of the solution to this has to be for more organisations to put audiences at the centre of their marketing strategies, rather than thinking in terms of separate channels and planning in silos.

Indeed, our respondents seem to recognise this: for the first time, the creation of campaigns based on deeper understanding of audiences is the number one priority for 2016 for most digital marketing managers. This is, of course, easier said than done. Whilst targeting your audience with a relevant message is at the heart of marketing, the online customer buying journey is increasingly complex. This means understanding and targeting audiences has become hugely challenging for marketers looking to deliver a cohesive campaign experience to users across channels and devices.

At Marin, we’re addressing this with our Audience Marketing Suite, which makes it possible for digital marketers to identify, create, and target their highest-value audiences across channels and devices for maximum conversions. We’ve also made is far simpler to synchronously create and target precise, powerful, and highly valuable audience segments based on buyer intent, and gain meaningful performance insights across your entire digital marketing program.

It will be fascinating to see, next year, how many digital marketing managers have been able to achieve their priorities. We wish every one of them the best of luck in doing so.