What I learnt from Ascend2’s 2016 ‘State of Digital Marketing Report’

If you haven’t had the chance to come across an Ascend2 report maybe it’s time you have a quick google search and see what they’re all about.  They are a research and marketing organisation which specializes in providing quality marketing research.  While they offer a large range of free reports, these reports are often quite brief and only provide graphs/statistics gathered from surveys from a large range of marketing organisations and marketers.

I have recently gone through their 2016 ‘State of Digital Marketing Report’ which was produced in early March, 2016.  It provided an insight into how marketers view digital marketing moving forward as well as which platforms they focus on.  It also touches on how marketers view the efficiency of marketing on different digital platforms.

My key findings from the report are below:

• 59% of marketers/organisations believe that the ‘state of their digital marketing’ is superior to their competitors.  10% of all marketers believed that the state of the their digital marketing was far-superior (best-in-class) when compared to their competitors.  When reading this, it shows that there is a lot of positivity within the marketing community.  Also, the majority of organisations seem happy with how their digital marketing is going.

• The main use for digital marketing is Lead Generation.  So, digital marketing hasn’t taken the responsibilities from the Sales Team, yet.  The main focus of marketing still seems to lie in attracting traffic and generating new leads.

• Email is still viewed as the most successful form of digital marketing, with 61% saying that Email is the most effective tactic used.  With the website and SEO coming in at 2nd and 3rd respectively, in regards to effectiveness.

• Even though Social Media Marketing has been growing, 50% of all surveyed said that social media marketing was the most difficult to execute.  Discussing that it takes time to execute and isn’t always completed in-house.

• 62% of all organisations surveyed use a combination of in-house and outsourced resources to complete their digital marketing tasks.  With only 30% completing all tasks in-house.  This points to the growing need of specialist digital marketers, which organisations seem to be turning to more and more.

The report paints a positive representation for the state of digital marketing in 2016.  Marketers and organisations are generally positive with how they view their own digital marketing practices and believe they are generally superior to their competitors.  The best way to execute some forms of digital marketing has yet to be determined and the more established forms of digital marketing are still viewed as the most effective.

To view the report yourself just head to www.ascend2.com to gain access.

Categorised in: Lead Generation, Marketing Automation, Marketing Strategy, Okategoriserade

This post was written by Fleur