Australia leads the region for digital marketing excellence

But new CMO Council and Adobe Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard Report finds marketers still lack unified multi-channel customer view and talent to lead actionable analytics strategy

View all images

Australia is leading the region when it comes to embracing and utilising digital marketing, but more needs to be done to build multi-channel customer engagement excellence and skill sets across the industry.

These are the overarching findings of the second annual APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard Report, conducted by the CMO Council in partnership with Adobe. The research involved a six-month in-field program to benchmark levels of adoption, traction and success of digital marketing across Australia, China, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and India and was based on responses from 276 senior marketers.

The report claims Australia leads the way when it comes to support for digital marketing from corporate leadership, with 44 per cent of senior managers providing very strong support this year, up from 29 per cent in 2012. This was much higher than all other countries regionally including Singapore, where 26 per cent of senior executives are backing digital marketing as a business strategy.

Overall, 49 per cent of Australian companies surveyed are spending at least 25 per cent of their total marketing budgets on digital marketing, a leap of 8 per cent year-on-year. The average global spend on digital marketing is between 25-35 per cent of total marketing budgets. Measurement capabilities, cost efficiency and the ability to prove a return on investment are the key drivers of digital marketing uptake in Australia.

“Australia has long been leading the market not just in business advancement, but also in terms of digital and mobile adoption,” CMO Council vice-president of marketing programs and operations, Liz Miller, told CMO. “On a marketing level, Australia has a corporate culture that values and positions marketing as a strategic role within business, not just as a functional part of the organisation.

“Australians also have a broad marketing toolkit and high degree of sophistication in terms of media modelling.”

In line with recent studies citing the flood of interest in content marketing, the Adobe dashboard found website content development is receiving the highest level of digital marketing funding in Australia (89 per cent). Email marketing moved into second place with 77 per cent, compared to 54 per cent last year, while search engine optimisation came in third at 74 per cent, up from 66 per cent in 2012.

Seventy-seven per cent of Australian marketers also put digital marketing content strategy as the top priority this year for the first time. Other major priorities are social media optimisation, and increasing and improving search and online display.

However, skills shortages, particularly around analytics, continue to hinder the Australian marketing industry’s ability to truly take advantage of digital marketing opportunities, along with insufficient investment.

Marketers continue to rely on isolated and old-fashioned measurements such as website performance (87 per cent of respondents) and click through rates (77 per cent), and are not looking enough at wider and more long-term metrics reflecting the customer lifecycle. For example, customer churn rates and customer lifetime value were listed as a priority by just 13 per cent of total respondents.

“These customer-centric measurements should define the actual business case, which is something marketers continue to have a hard time positioning,” Miller commented. “That has to come from real revenue and engagement – it can’t come from campaign metrics or KPIs.”

Miller pointed out Australians continue to struggle to run the types of analytics programs needed to take digital customer engagement to the next level.

“We need to base the development of relevant content on key actionable data found from that customer intelligence. Think of it as digital marketing phases: Australia is certainly at phase two, looking to move into phase three, but we’re lacking the talent that can power the insights, analytics and that ‘big data equation’ in order to push us forward and meld content with that true actionable customer insight data.

“We’ve also created this 'Frankenstein' effect by looking at all these digital channels through different and isolated dashboards, and just been paralysed in the midst of all that analytics. We get results from email, social, the Web, direct mail programs, that don’t link and connect, so we don’t have the ability to show how our customer is actually engaging with us as an organisation.

“The universal truth heard the world over is that customers do not do business with one channel. Customers do business with a brand. We have to start not only thinking of strategies that are fully connected and across channel, but also thinking about measurements that are cross-channel. That’s where technology platforms come in that can measure across all those touchpoints become critical.”

5 ways to conquer multi-channel marketing
Australian marketers don’t get multi-channel marketing: Report
Marketing 2014: Follow, move faster, look further

Another interesting finding of the latest dashboard is the reliance of Australian marketers on multiple agencies to conduct digital activities (79 per cent; up from 65 per cent in 2012). This is despite the fact that just 18 per cent of marketers rate their agencies ‘extremely effective’.

Miller also put this down to insufficient strategic skills in the agency sector.

While there is a ways to go, Adobe’s managing director, Paul Robson, welcomed Australia’s position as a digital marketing centre of excellence across the Asian region.

“This vindicates our decision to set-up a digital marketing centre of excellence in a mature market such as Sydney and share that expertise and leverage those skills for the region,” he added.

Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia

Signup to CMO’s new email newsletter to receive your weekly dose of targeted content for the modern marketing chief.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.
Show Comments

Latest Videos

More Videos

More Brand Posts

What are Chris Riddell's qualifications to talk about technology? What are the awards that Chris Riddell has won? I cannot seem to find ...

Tareq

Digital disruption isn’t disruption anymore: Why it’s time to refocus your business

Read more

Enterprisetalk

Mark

CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June

Read more

Great e-commerce article!

Vadim Frost

CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes

Read more

Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...

jackson13

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.

Ella Hall

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Blog Posts

Marketing prowess versus the enigma of the metaverse

Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.

Liz Miller

VP, Constellation Research

Why Excellent Leadership Begins with Vertical Growth

Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?

Michael Bunting

Author, leadership expert

More than money talks in sports sponsorship

As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.

Simone Waugh

Managing Director, Publicis Queensland

Sign in