Managing Digital Marketing Smart Insights PDF

Managing Digital Marketing in 2016
Best practices for integrating digital technology,

marketing and media to fuel business growth
Authors: Dr Dave Chaffey and Robert Allen, SmartInsights.com
Contents
Executive summary............................................................................3
Introduction. Managing digital marketing in 2016...........................5
1. Review digital marketing capabilities and transformation.........9
2. Developing integrated strategies and plans..............................12
3. Investing in digital marketing......................................................18
4. Innovation and optimising digital marketing.............................23
Appendix...........................................................................................26
Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 2
Executive summary
Managing Digital Marketing in 2016
This research from Smart Insights and Technology for Marketing (TFM) explores
approaches businesses use to plan and manage their investments in digital marketing.
Findings and recommendations are grouped in 5 areas aimed at improving the commercial
contribution of digital marketing for businesses.
1. Digital marketing capabilities and transformation

The majority of the 1096 companies surveyed are still actively working on transformation
of their digital marketing capabilities less than 20% rating their digital communications,
customer communications or performance improvement process at an advanced level.
When asked about managing digital transformation, 32% of businesses had a

transformation programme in place, with 34% planning to implement a programme within
the next 12 months. This represents a considerable increase on last year, when less than
20% of businesses had a transformation programme in place.
Good practice: Audit your digital marketing capabilities and create a roadmap for
digital transformation to improve capabilities over the medium to long-term.
2. Digital marketing strategy and planning

In business, its recognised that plans help companies to prioritise, set goals and allocate
resources to meet targets. Yet a planned approach often isnt followed in digital marketing
or marketing:
Nearly half (47%) of businesses surveyed do not have a defined digital plan or
strategy, although they are active in digital marketing.
Likewise, nearly half (44%) dont have a clearly defined marketing strategy...
Good practice: Dont just execute! Create a long-term integrated digital strategy
and plan aligning with marketing and business priorities.

Executive summary
3. Improving integration with digital transformation

programmes
Integration of digital channels into marketing activities was identified as a major challenge
in the research only 17% of companies were happy with the level of integration.
Good practice: Use digital transformation programmes to eliminate digital

marketing silos and improve integration through integrated planning and
collaboration during campaigns and always-on marketing activities.
4. Investing in digital marketing in 2016

The research focused on discovering which channels marketers rated as delivering the
greatest ROI, this being the most critical metric for most marketing departments, and
key to justifying further spend. Email marketing performed the best, with 80% saying
it delivered medium to high cost effectiveness. Similar to last years survey, email was
followed by SEO as the next most cost effective technique (71%). Interestingly, whilst
AdWords came third in our survey last year, it has slipped to being the fourth most
effective channel, as organic social media has risen to be perceived as moderately to
highly effective by 69% of marketers.
Good practice: With the diversity of paid, owned and earned media, its important
to focus resources and optimisation on core channels that drive value.
5. Innovation and optimising digital marketing

The opportunity to dynamically update and test digital media has always been claimed
to be one of its main benefits compared to traditional media, so we were interested to
see to what extent companies have processes in place to execute this continuously.
On average, roughly 20% of businesses were not using any form of optimization tests,
meaning four out of five companies are using them. Desktop websites and Emails were
the forms of digital media most likely to have optimization tests carried out on them, with
social media not far behind. There was a lot of room for improvement with marketers use
of optimization tests, as the majority were using limited or intermittent optimization, with
only one in 10 engaged in continuous optimization.
Good practice: You cant compete if you update your website or your
communications approaches every few years... Create a plan for Always-on
optimisation of digital media and integrated customer experiences.

Introduction
The need for managing digital transformation

Late last year, Smart Insights quoted PepsiCo Exec Brad Jakeman as saying that
digital marketing was the most ridiculous term hed ever heard. Instead, he argued that
although digital is often discussed as an afterthought, it should permeate everything
marketers do. He added There is no such thing as digital marketing. There is marketing
- most of which happens to be digital. Similarly, Amanda Rendle of HSBC says that she
has banned the term digital in her team, to encourage a more integrated approach. We
can see they believe they need to take this stance, but the reality we see is that digital
marketing presents such an opportunity (and challenge) to businesses that it needs to
be managed proactively. Our Managing digital marketing skills report shows that more
than half of all marketers time is now spent on managing digital marketing. Surely this
mean digital marketing has to be acknowledged with specific skills developed and digital
transformation plans are needed so that, in the longer-term digital marketing is fully
integrated, so it is part of business-as-usual.
In a Google Think article, A Post Digital World, Really? Y&R Chairman and CEO David
Sable argued against those commentators who said that businesses and consumers are
now in a Post Digital world. We concur. You will see from the results of this survey that
the reality for many businesses is that despite widespread adoption of digital technology
by their customers and some of their advanced competitors, we are still in an era of
managing transformation to improved digital capabilities. Many businesses are limited
in their capabilities and currently lack plans to integrate digital effectively. However,
there is a strong appetite to improve their approach to digital marketing using digital
transformation and increased investment in digital media and technology.
Research aim and methodology

At Smart Insights we believe that successful marketers look beyond chasing every latest
technology innovation, instead developing a more strategic, yet agile, managed approach
based on optimising communications for key customer touchpoints. So, in this research
we wanted to go beyond reviewing the digital marketing tactics deployed and explore the

Introduction
strategic approaches businesses take to manage the transformation needed to improve

the commercial contribution of digital marketing integrated with all marketing activities.
To achieve this aim we surveyed Smart Insights members who are based around the
world and attendees of TFM, eCommerce Expo and Customer Contact Expo who are
based in the UK and Europe. The survey was completed online during March to April
2016. Thank you if you took the time to share your experiences of digital marketing.
There were 1190 respondents, although the majority were from the United Kingdom or
the United States. Respondents were marketing managers of various levels of seniority.
Further details on the sample frame are available at the end of the report.
About Smart Insights

Smart Insights provides actionable marketing resources to help businesses succeed
online. More than 130,000 Basic members use our blog, sample marketing templates
and weekly Digital Marketing Essentials newsletter to follow best practices and keep
up-to-date with the developments that matter in digital marketing.
Thousands of Expert members from over 80 countries use our planning and management
toolkits, templates, guides and video courses to map, plan and manage their marketing
using the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.
Here are 10 reasons why Expert members use our resources.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Strategy development and planning templates
We have developed a series of tools for Expert members to help them plan:
Digital strategy toolkit. This template contains a full workbook to create a
digital marketing strategy to Reach-Act-Convert and Engage your audience.
7 Steps Digital Strategy guide and course. Step-by-step guidance.
Example digital marketing plans. An example online marketing plan and
blank template using the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.

Introduction
About our partners Technology for Marketing (TFM), taking

place 28-29 September 2016 at Olympia, London
Were delighted to have teamed up again with TFM to research and present these findings
and recommendations. TFM is the only event dedicated to technology for marketing in the
UK, which enables marketers to find the right technology to advance their marketing and
grow their business.
New for 2016 3 events under 1 roof

TFM will take place alongside eCommerce Expo and Customer Contact Expo - uniting
marketing, ecommerce and customer service professionals working across the entire
customer journey from acquisition and conversion through to delivery & fulfillment, customer
service and customer retention.
Each event will offer relevant advice, expert training, practical demonstrations and high
quality thought leadership covering their aspect of the customer journey including how to
approach technology purchasing, implementation and integration alongside developing the
skills and processes required to deliver optimum results.
Dr Dave Chaffey, CEO of Smart Insights will be presenting the research and recommen-
dations in seminar sessions at TFM 2016, taking place on the 28-29 September 2016 at
Olympia National London.
For more information and to register to attend for free, visit technologyformarketing.co.uk.
About the report author

Dr Dave Chaffey is CEO and co-founder of digital marketing
management advice site Smart Insights. He is author of 5
bestselling books on Ecommerce including Digital Marketing:
Strategy, Implementation and Practice and was recognised by the
Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2004 as one of 50 marketing
gurus worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Introduction
Research findings and recommendations

In common with all resources for members in our Smart Insights Digital Marketing Library,
we want this report to be practical and actionable, to make a commercial difference
to your business. So, the results presented from this research are structured around
practical activities companies can use to follow a more strategic, planned approach to
digital marketing. Each section is based around questions the marketer can ask to review
and so improve his or her approach to managing digital marketing.
We hope you find this research and recommendations useful in reviewing and shaping
your use of digital marketing. If you have any comments or questions, do get in touch.
Dave Chaffey, SmartInsights.com, May 2016

1 Review digital marketing capabilities
and implement digital transformation
Does your company have the right capabilities in place to

make the most of digital marketing?
Whether companies are able to deliver on the potential of digital channels to contribute
value depends on whether they have the right capabilities in place across the company to
mange all the digital touchpoints to reach, interact, convert and engage their audiences.
We asked companies to rate their digital capabilities from an initial level, 1 through to an
advanced optimized level of 5 by referencing the capability assessment shown on the
next page. Results show that the majority of companies rate their capabilities at lower
levels of 1 to 3 on this scale of 1 to 5.
Assessment of digital marketing capabilities in businesses
Q11
Assessment of digital marketing capabilities in businesses
A. Strategic approach 23% 35% 24% 14% 4% Initial
Managed
B. Performance
Improvement process 27% 36% 21% 12% 4%
Defined
Quantified
C. Management buy-in 21% 32% 24% 14% 9%
Optimized
D. Resourcing and
21% 39% 24% 10% 6%
structure
E. Data and
23% 36% 24% 13% 4%
infrastructure
F. Integrated customer
27% 34% 23% 12% 4%
communications
G. Integrated customer
27% 34% 24% 12% 3%
experience
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

3 Importance
1 Investing in of
digital
digital
marketing
marketing
Since digital marketing involves execution of many marketing processes and activities,
its useful to rate different types of capabilities by their current effectiveness as shown
by our capability review below. To download a larger version of the capability matrix go
to http://bit.ly/smarttransformation or use our interactive benchmark in the members area.
AIMING FOR DIGITAL Take your digital marketing to the next level with our
capability assessment. Use our visual checklist to audit
MARKETING EXCELLENCE how well your business or clients are exploiting their digital
marketing and then plan how to take it to the next level.
FIVE. Optimized
FOUR. Quantified
THREE. Defined
Digital
TWO. Managed
Capability ONE. Initial Business-aligned
Agile strategic
approach
Defined vision and strategy and roadmap
Prioritised marketing strategy
A. Strategic activities
No strategy
Approach
B. Performance Quality-based KPIs Value-based KPIs

Volume-based KPIs Lifetime-value KPIs
Improvement No KPIs Last click attribution Weighted attribution
No dashboards Continuous CRO
Process Business dashboards Ad hoc CRO
C. Management Verbal support, but Sponsorship and Active championing and Integral part of
Limited
Buy-in inadequate resourcing increased investment approriate investment strategy development
D. Resourcing Centralised hub and

Core skills centralised or Decentralisation and Balanced blend of
and No specific skills spoke
agencies reskilling marketing skills
Structure Dedicated resources
E. Data
Limited / no Separate data, tools Partially integrated Integrated systems Flexible approach to
and
customer database and IT services systems and data and 360o data sources optimize resources
Infrastructure
F. Integrated Integrated, Personalised,

Core push activities Integrated inbound Media optimized for ROI
Customer Not integrated Paid-Owned-Earned
synchronised approach and to maximize CLV
Communications media
G. Integrated Partially personalized Integrated, Personalized web, Full contexual

Desktop and mobile
Customer Website not integrated desktop and mobile mobile, email and social media personalized experiences
support, not personalized
Experience experience communications and recommendations
Developing Competent average Above-sector average Market leading

Laggard capability capability capability
capability
Refine your Digital Marketing Strategy Check out our hub page http://bit.ly/smartstrategy for Join our Expert members to download digital marketing planning
Scoring your digital capabilities can help show colleagues your current use of digital
with Smart Insights member toolkits. our free blog articles and planning template. templates and our 7 Step guides to digital strategy.
marketing and how far you need to go. This can help prioritisation of future improvements.
The weakest processes that are important for future improvement can be identified and
prioritised. Creating a roadmap is a great way to show that Digital Transformation is a
long-term journey and cant be achieved overnight, or without sufficient investment.
!
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 1: BENCHMARK YOUR CAPABILITIES
Score your digital capabilities to benchmark and then analyse how you can
improve and to win the case for investment
Assess what your current capabilities are overall and for key digital channels
to communicate to colleagues where you need to improve. All Smart Insights
members can use our interactive benchmarks in the member area to review their
digital capabilities across the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.

3 Importance
1 Investing in of
digital
digital
marketing
marketing
EXPERT VIEW AUDITING DIGITAL CAPABILITIES

Daniel Rowles, Digital Marketing Consultant and Trainer, Target Internet
I think the best practice of auditing digital capability is of huge significance

and this is inline with other findings around a lack of strategy and internal skills.
Organisations are just waking up to the need to step back and look at their digital
capability and assess what it is that is holding them back, and what they need
to change in order to make effective digital possible. The emergence of Digital
Transformation as a key issue that organisations are thinking about is great news.
Understanding the gap between where we are now and where we need to be is
essential.
Its surprising how many organisations are still dealing with the basics, but I
think this reflects back to need for digital capability auditing and the need for
organisational transformation. Without the fundamental building blocks in place
that will give the right environment for digital, no progress can be made. Many
marketers are spending their time battling with IT infrastructure issues or getting
management buy in, and this prevents the advancement of their digital marketing.
Adoption of digital transformation programmes

Organisations who recognise the importance of digital media and technologies in the
future and seek to accelerate the rate of change to integrating digital marketing into their
business create digital transformation programmes.
To find out the commitment to digital transformation we asked respondents about their
current adoption of digital transformation programmes.
The results, shown on the next page, show that nearly one third (33%) of businesses
already have a transformation programme in place, with many businesses still looking to
launch their digital transformation programme.

3 Importance
1 Investing in of
digital
digital
marketing
marketing
Adoption of digital transformation programmes by businesses
9% We have no plans to run a digital

transformation programme
We are planning to introduce a

34% programme within the next 12 months
23%
We have just started a digital transformation
programme (within the last 2 years)
We have had a digital transformation

process in place for > 2 years
34%
A significant proportion of organisations have no intention to implement a programme

because they feel it is inappropriate for their type of business, for example, startups and
smaller businesses or businesses who are online pureplays. It is interesting how small a
percentage have had a programme in place for over two years. This highlights that many
businesses are still in a period of transitioning to being digital first, and the process of
digital transformation is far from finished.
Smart Insights Benchmarking Tools
We have developed a series of strategic tools to help companies review their
digital marketing and make the case for more investment in digital marketing:
Digital marketing audit / benchmark
A detailed spreadsheet based technique for assessing a company in 6 key
areas. with an Ecommerce option (PRICE framework) available also
Competitor benchmarking tools
A recommended process and tools for comparing performance.
Business case template
Improvement needed can be justified through this template and the companion Ebook.

2 Developing Integrated Strategies
and Plans for Digital Marketing
Is digital marketing based on a planned approach?

We believe that to gain the most from digital platforms, a structured, planned approach
based on a solid strategy will give the best results. Plans help businesses to prioritise,
set goals and resource at the right level to hit targets. Without structured plans, there is
a danger you will be subject to shiny object syndrome, always chasing your tail, as Jeff
Bezos of Amazon has referred to.
We found that a majority of organisations responding to the survey do use a planned

approach to digital marketing, but almost half still dont. Weve seen progress compared to
past yearsOrganisations with marketing
in integrating digital a clearly strategy
defined withdigital
thatmarketing strategy
of the overall marketing plan.
Previous years saw larger percentages defining their strategy in a separate document.
Organisations with a clearly defined digital marketing strategy
Organisations with a clearly defined digital marketing strategy
Yes - it's integrated into our

35% marketing strategy
Yes - it's defined in a separate
47% document
No - we are doing digital marketing,
but no defined strategy
18%
Shockingly, nearly half of businesses do not have a digital marketing strategy, but they
are doing digital marketing. Perhaps this is not surprising since we also found that 44%
of businesses didnt have a marketing strategy to align their digital strategy with.

2 Developing integrated digital strategies
!
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 2: CREATE A DIGITAL PLAN
Create a specific digital marketing plan aligned with marketing strategy
To provide focus and direction for the future, create a detailed digital marketing
plan defining the digital channel strategy for each major market / proposition.
How should digital marketing and traditional marketing be

integrated?
As discussed in the introduction, there is a risk that separate digital marketing plans
and teams lead to silos for digital marketing, so its important to think about how you
manage integration. The research shows marketers are making solid progress towards
integration, although relatively few describe their approach as fully integrated.
Only 5% of companies thought their integration process was completely optimised.

Yet there is reason to be optimistic about the state of marketing integration. A third of
respondents reported that they were making solid progress, and overall 50% of businesses
were happy with their integration efforts, compared to just 25% in last years survey.
Q12 Assessment of integration of digital and traditional marketing activities
Assessment of integration of digital
and traditional marketing activities
Optimising. Full integration
and processes are reviewed 5%
for optimisation.
Fully-integrated. Digital marketing is
integrated within the wider marketing 12%
plan but we're not optimising.
Actively trying to integrate the two. We
are making solid progress in integrating 33%
digital and traditional marketing.
Limited integration. We use digital
marketing, but it isn't well 33%
integrated into overall strategy.
Not integrated. Our use of

digital marketing is ad hoc 13%
and not integrated.
Not applicable - we solely

use digital media and 4%
communications.
0% 10% 20% 30%

Integration requires a clear marketing or business strategy and plan also. The survey
results suggests that lack of a marketing plan in a substantial proportion of organisations
may make it difficult to align a digital plan against!
BEST PRACTICE TIP 1

Create a hierarchy of plans for integrated different timescales and activities
To help develop a more coherent approach to marketing planning, we suggest

you develop a hierarchy of plans as shown in the diagram below. Annual business
and marketing objectives can cascade into goals, objectives and KPIs for different
marketing activities on 90 day plans.
How should you go about optimising your customer journey?

We have seen how there is a major challenge for many marketers of creating integrated
strategies and communications plans. From a customer point-of-view there is also likely
to be a poor experience if their customer journeys are unclear or restricted by the inability
of brands to integrate their communications and experiences.

A focus on improving customer journeys by businesses can help resolve customer

journeys. We see a key trend in 2016 as a focus on customer journey effectiveness.
Marketers are starting to realise that experience is what counts, with thought leaders like
Brian Solis of Altimeter urging markets to realise that your customer experience is your
brand.
In our customer persona toolkit we show how different techniques such as customer
persona development, customer journey analysis and content mapping can be used to
review and improve digital experiences in conjunction with conversion rate optimisation.
Since improving your customer journey can be one of the most effective way to boost
online leads and sales and bottom line. With that in mind, we asked respondents which
techniquesTechniques used towere
their businesses research
usingand improve and
to research customer journey
improve effectivenessof
the effectiveness
their customer journey.
Use of customer journey analysis and improvement techniques

Customer personas 18%
AB Testing 17%
Customer journey mapping 16%
Website customer intent surveys 12%
Path analysis in analytics 11%
Voice of Customer surveys,

10%
e.g. Net Promoter Score
Usability studies of digital experiences 9%
Multivariate testing 5%
Other 2%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
AB testing is clearly the most popular way marketers assess the effectiveness of their
customer journeys, as its easy to carry out and leads to actionable results. Yet a relatively

small proportion of businesses are using this technique and others such as persona
analysis and customer journey mapping.
Whats more, often A/B tests are too simple, and multivariate testing is needed, yet only
5% of marketers are engaged in this form of testing when it comes to their customer
journey. We recommend managers invest in their teams skills and in tools to help them
conduct tests for effectively. Only with testing can you get the data you need to optimise
your customer journey.
How effective is Marketing Automation in 2016?

Marketing Automation grew massively in popularity in 2015, and is coming of age in
2016. A separate survey by Smart Insights discovered that marketers rate marketing
automation as the 3rd most important marketing trend of 2016.
For this report, we asked marketers to rate how well they are currently utilising marketing
automation tools, with some interesting results. The vast majority of marketers were
using at least some marketing automation tools, as only 24% did not use it. However
many were just using the basics, and only 15% rated themselves as using all or most
of the features. Therefore there is clearly a big scope for improving company use of
marketing automation in 2016. Managers should address any skills shortages on their
Rating
teams by investing of the thetooverall
in training effectiveness
let staff ofout
get the most Marketing Automation
of the systems thatinare
your business?
already
in place.
2016 Ratings of Marketing Automation usage
High - we use all features and optimise

4%
them to get the best results
Good - we use the majority of features

but need to optimise them
11%
Intermediate - we use some features but

need to build our capability
23%
Moderately - we're using the core

features of automation 14%
Basic - we're not using many of the features

of Marketing Automation
24%
We're not using Marketing Automation 24%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%

EXPERT VIEW OVERCOMING INTERNAL ROADBLOCKS

Kieran Flanagan, Marketing Director, EMEA, HubSpot

The biggest road block for most businesses is usually themselves. To be more
accurate, that person in the company who owns the budget/resources and doesnt
understand digital. There are too many CMOs, CEOs or other variations of senior
management who still dont fully understand digital. They usually have a team
beneath them trying to push digital forward, but they wont hand over the keys to
let them make the necessary changes.
One way this can be bridged is with continued education. Education around
digital marketing has never been better. There are so many places marketers can
go to upskill themselves on digital.
They other way is of course with results. Marketers who want to push digital forward
within their company need to demonstrate positive results before theyll get the
necessary budget/resources need to make this happen. What I tell marketers in
this position is to initially look for quick wins. What is the quickest way you can
demonstrate success to your manager/CMO/CEO. How do you provide them with
that moment where they start to see the value in what you are proposing.
We have developed a series of tools to help Expert members plan:

digital marketing strategy to Reach-Act-Convert and Engage your audience over
the next year or in a 90 day planning period.

3 Investing in Digital Marketing
in 2016
Which are the most effective digital marketing channels to

invest in?
To choose the best level of investment in digital marketing requires an assessment of
which channels will produce significant volumes of leads and sales at an acceptable
cost per acquisition (CPA) for new customers. We asked marketers to give their views on
which channels for were most cost effective.
Q8 Rating of cost-effectiveness of digital marketing channels 2016
2016 Rating of cost-effectiveness of digital marketing channels

Social media (paid ads) 14% 17% 24% 19% 10% 16%
Email marketing 7% 13% 25% 27% 23% 5%
Online PR 11% 20% 27% 22% 10% 10%
Display advertising 20% 24% 24% 13% 6% 13%
Social media (organic) 10% 21% 26% 24% 15% 4%
Paid SearchMarketing (AdWords) 14% 18% 23% 22% 9% 14%
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 9% 15% 25% 26% 19% 6%
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Lowest Low - medium Medium Medium - high Highest Not used or N/A
To assess your investments in digital media we recommend you take a look at our
Content Distribution matrix.

3 Investing in digital marketing
The chart shows that Email marketing leads the pack in terms of perceived cost-effec-
tiveness, with SEO not far behind. Social Media comes in third this year, just beating
AdWords, which had been 3rd highest rated in previous years.
EXPERT VIEW MEASURING CHANNEL SUCCESS

Kieran Flanagan, Marketing Director, EMEA, HubSpot
The question for me is how are marketers measuring the success of these
channels. Often marketers will try measure all channels by the same metrics. They
look at leads or sales generated by each channel and then rank them in order of
conversions they generate. Measuring in this way will mean channels like social
will always be below Adwords and SEO, and will probably not look that attractive.
Measuring against the right metrics is such an important part of making good
decisions on what channels to invest time and energy in. Paid social media could
look bad when measured against direct leads and sales attributed to it, but may
look great when you look at multi-attribution reports for those same metrics.
The assessments by marketers of channel effectiveness are consistent with the patterns
reported for driving visits across websites reported by SimilarWeb - you can use this tool
for comparing to competitors. The chart below for the retail Ecommerce sector shows
that search and direct visits are the main traffic drivers, with Social media marketing and
display relatively low. Email is included within the referrals category in this example - so
this cant be compared to the reported data from marketers in our study.

Considering another data point, Custoras Ecommerce Pulse, a compilation of traffic

sources for online retail sales, we can see a similar pattern where paid and organic are
really important. You can see that email marketing is really important here, since this
will include customer orders prompted by email marketing.
BEST PRACTICE TIP 5

Review channel volume against ROI to select the best mix
You can plot volume of leads and sales for different digital media on the horizontal
axis against cost-effectiveness on a vertical axis. You should review specific ad
network placements such as AdWords remarketing or paid social media marketing
techniques. See our Content Distribution Matrix infographic for an example.

Use of data for targeting

We also looked at innovation in using data for targeting. The results show that, overall
businesses are long way from the 360 degree customer view and personalised customer
lifecycle marketing that many have discussed for a long time.
Q14
Data-driven marketing -
Data-driven marketing - how well are you able to target your audience?
How are you able to target your audience?

Behavioural segment (e.g. preference or intent
based on Recency, Frequency or Monetary value 21%
of purchase or click on website or email)
Disclosed profile 20%

(e.g. age or gender)
Customer value (current) 18%
Social media interactions 17%

or sentiment
Channel preference 14%
Customer value (future e.g.

predictive modelling) 8%
Other 2%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
EXPERT VIEW ENCOURAGING MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS

Philip Sheldrake, Author, the Business of Influence
Its striking that marketers can respond to survey questions about effectiveness
and admit simultaneously a paucity in measurement capability.
If they measure at all, the majority of marketing teams measure outputs in my
experience, not outcomes. Its far easier to measure outputs, but easy and useful
arent the same thing. If you measure simply what you can rather than what you
should, subsequent conclusions will be entirely a function of output measurability
than anything resembling strategic effectiveness...

EXPERT VIEW ENCOURAGING MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS

Philip Sheldrake, Author, the Business of Influence
... How to encourage measurement of effectiveness? We must appeal to emotions
and character in order to have logic prevail. Every line manager understands the
emotional pressures of reporting to a higher up, and having answers is part and
parcel of good relations with the boss. Talk about the emotional power that comes
from confidence in good measurement and evaluation.
On the character front, distinguish between management (doing things right) and
leadership (doing the right things). Many managers aspire to lead, and that starts
with knowing the right things to do. Investing in understanding what works and what
doesnt is the right thing to do because it helps determine the right things to do.

4 Innovation And Optimising
Digital Marketing
Are marketers managing digital marketing activities

continuously?
The opportunity to dynamically update and test digital media has always been claimed
to be one of its main benefits compared to traditional media, so we were interested to
see to what extent companies have processes in place to manage this continuously.
The concept of Always-on marketing has emerged to show a change in emphasis of
investment in marketing activities from burst marketing campaigns to generate awareness
and response to continuously driving demand for products and services as consumers
search and review products and services. Real-time marketing is also part of Always-on
since marketers can deliver more relevant content that is being discussed in social media
and by word-of-mouth.
For Always-on marketing to be effective, testing, review and optimisation are essential
to increase the effectiveness of different digital channels. We explored the use of digital
marketing optimisation through a question which reviews the use of testing across
channels. The response to this question shows a core group of respondents have moved
beyond intermittent to more regular structured testing and optimisation programmes.
A relatively small proportion (around a third of companies) have embraced optimisation

with these leaders running frequent tests or continuously optimising. The percentage of
leaders who optimised individual channels using continuous optimisation or structured
tests were at similar level to 2015.
Website (Desktop experience) 2015- 30% 2016- 28%

Mobile (Mobile site and/or apps) 2015- 21% 2016- 21%
Landing pages 2015- 29% 2016- 28%
Email marketing 2015- 35% 2016- 34%
Social media marketing 2015- 29% 2016- 30%
Content marketing 2015- 28% 2016- 26%
Paid digital media 2015- 30% 2016- 22%
The next page shows a full breakdown of planned structured optimisation tests for 2015.

4 Innovation and optimisation
Always-on Marketing and Digital Agility -

please rate your use of structured optimisation tests
to improve these digital marketing activities
Paid digital media 22% 20% 21% 12% 10% 15%
Content marketing 18% 24% 26% 15% 10% 7%
Social media 17% 23% 25% 17% 13% 5%

marketing
Email marketing 15% 23% 24% 21% 13% 4%
Landing pages 18% 22% 27% 19% 9% 5%
Mobile (Mobile site

and/or apps) 24% 23% 24% 12% 9% 8%
Website (Desktop
experience) 17% 24% 29% 16% 12% 3%
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
No optimisation Some limited testing Intermittent optimisation projects

Frequent tests Continuous optimisation Dont use or N/A

EXPERT VIEW TOWARDS AGILE MARKETING
Joe Edwards, Consultant, Brand Joe
The term lean / agile marketing seem to be appearing more and more, which
Measurement, testing and optimisation underpin these. I would argue that
perhaps its not actually about more investment at all, its about re-aligning existing
budgets and re-setting objectives.
In a lean world its about minimum viable product, if we start thinking like that in
marketing wed not need more budget for testing, it would just be built-in, wed
reap the rewards of our marketing efforts, enough to build the next program,
where more investment would be a natural by-product of the previous activity,
perhaps a holy grail ... but if its more budget we need then, its business case we
need to provide, what are your expected outcomes from further investment, can
you project or build KPIs around what additional conversions you would hope to
achieve.

6 Innovation And Optimising Digital Marketing
We hope you have found this report useful to compare against your approaches to digital
marketing and inform your investments.
Do let us know if you have any comments or questions via @SmartInsights or our
community.
We have developed a series of tools for Expert members to help them plan:
digital marketing strategy to Reach-Act-Convert and Engage your audience.
7 Steps Digital Strategy guide and course. Step-by-step guidance.

Appendix
Methodology
The survey was completed online during March and April 2016. There were 1096
respondents from all over the world. The majority of respondents came from the UK and
Europe and the United States.
Types of business
Businesses respondents represented a wide range of sectors and sizes including Retail,
Financial services, Consumer brands, travel and public sector/education.
Respondents
Respondents all worked in marketing roles, but at various levels of seniority, from CEO
to assistant.
The breakdown of respondents roles was as follows
CEO / COO / President / Chairman: 192
VP / Director: 74
Owner / Proprietor: 87
Head of department: 170
Manager with staff: 221
Manager without staff: 251
Assistant: 101


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Managing Digital Marketing in 2016

Best practices for integrating digital technology,

Introduction. Managing digital marketing in 2016...........................5

1. Review digital marketing capabilities and transformation.........9

2. Developing integrated strategies and plans..............................12

3. Investing in digital marketing......................................................18

4. Innovation and optimising digital marketing.............................23

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

1. Digital marketing capabilities and transformation

When asked about managing digital transformation, 32% of businesses had a

2. Digital marketing strategy and planning

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

3. Improving integration with digital transformation

Good practice: Use digital transformation programmes to eliminate digital

4. Investing in digital marketing in 2016

5. Innovation and optimising digital marketing

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

The need for managing digital transformation

Research aim and methodology

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

strategic approaches businesses take to manage the transformation needed to improve

About Smart Insights

Here are 10 reasons why Expert members use our resources.

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

About our partners Technology for Marketing (TFM), taking

New for 2016 3 events under 1 roof

About the report author

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

Research findings and recommendations

Dave Chaffey, SmartInsights.com, May 2016

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

Does your company have the right capabilities in place to

A. Strategic approach 23% 35% 24% 14% 4% Initial

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

B. Performance Quality-based KPIs Value-based KPIs

D. Resourcing Centralised hub and

F. Integrated Integrated, Personalised,

G. Integrated Partially personalized Integrated, Personalized web, Full contexual

Developing Competent average Above-sector average Market leading

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

EXPERT VIEW AUDITING DIGITAL CAPABILITIES

I think the best practice of auditing digital capability is of huge significance

Adoption of digital transformation programmes

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

Adoption of digital transformation programmes by businesses

9% We have no plans to run a digital

We are planning to introduce a

We have had a digital transformation

A significant proportion of organisations have no intention to implement a programme

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

Is digital marketing based on a planned approach?

We found that a majority of organisations responding to the survey do use a planned

Organisations with a clearly defined digital marketing strategy

Yes - it's integrated into our

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

How should digital marketing and traditional marketing be

Only 5% of companies thought their integration process was completely optimised.

Not integrated. Our use of

Not applicable - we solely

Managing Digital Marketing 2016. Published May 2016.

BEST PRACTICE TIP 1

To help develop a more coherent approach to marketing planning, we suggest