Marketers becoming more digitally savvy, survey claims
Australian marketers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approach to digital marketing and are using it to build brand equity in addition to driving sales, a survey has claimed.
Research carried out by Qualtrics suggested a level of digital marketing adoption that surprised advertising retargeting specialist AdRoll, which commissioned the study.
According to the survey of 200 marketers, seven out of 10 are using retargeting strategies to raise awareness of their brand while a similar number said they intend to crank up their retargeting spend over the next 12 months.
In addition, marketers are retargeting their ads on mobile, traditionally a weak platform for brands. AdRoll’s head of mobile growth Ben Witte told Mumbrella in September that mobile advertising today “is where desktop advertising was in 1999″ and urged more businesses to rethink their strategies to be “mobile first, but not mobile only”.
“We have recognised that Australians are a lot more sophisticated than we originally expected. Their use of advertising technology platforms is equal to, if not more advanced than, some of our clients in the US,” AdRoll ANZ managing director Ben Sharp said.
“Retargeting is quite often perceived as a performance only channel and one of the significant statistics in the study is that 71 per cent look at retargeting from a branding perspective.We were expecting markers would use retargeting for conversion and sales.
“This shows that marketers are embracing retargeting for holistic marketing purposes and it’s being led by Australian marketers.”
Another “pleasing” aspect of the survey, Sharp said, was that 53 per cent of marketers are putting retargeting strategies in place for mobile, with more than half seeing an increase in mobile conversions as a result. The survey also claimed that 93 per cent of marketers reported equal or better conversions than other display ads, 90 per cent equal or better than email and 88 per cent equal or better than search.
AdRoll’s global senior director of marketing Jackie Lamping added: “When we speak to Australia marketers, they don’t given themselves enough credit for how innovative and performance focused they are.”
Alongside brand awareness – which was the key objective of marketers – 60 per cent said driving sales and 55 per cent said customer retention were major metrics although the overall “campaign success metric” was conversions.
Turning to funding, only four out of 10 marketers spend between 10 and 25 per cent of their budget on retargeting their ads but 69 per cent revealed they will increase that next year.
Meanwhile, Sharp claimed AdRoll has doubled its client base to 850 companies since launching in Australia in February with revenue growth of 250 per cent.
He said the firm was targeting growth of 300 per cent in 2015.
“We had lofty goals this year but we well and truly hit them,” he said. “Australia is our fastest growing market globally. It is a really exciting and innovative market.”
Steve Jones
You would hope so wouldn’t you?
One of the best marketing leads I have ever met is a qualified accountant and more savvy than most when it comes to ‘digital’.
Do modern day marketing teams need to be analytical first, ahead of any spray and pray? I think they do and I think that is you are savvy, you can reap the rewards in a very big way.
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Tech savvy only with the basics else rubbish. Time and again, Australia seems to fail with marketing, advertising and media. So much research from various authorities within the country and from outside that mention these with statistics as well. Latest one, even showed how Australia is still way behind in content marketing.
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