Marketing Benchmark Statistics

Digital marketing maturity benchmarks

2021
Benchmark your digital maturity to drive marketing transformation

Editor: Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights

Part of the Marketing Strategy and Planning Toolkit

CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY������������������������������������������������������������������������ 2

MATURITY OF PLANNING FOR MARKETING MATURITY����������������������������� 7

DIGITAL MARKETING MATURITY BENCHMARKS�������������������������������������10

THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC����������������������������������������������������������19

INDUSTRY MATURITY COMPARISON�����������������������������������������������������22

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The aim of this research from Smart Insights and BrightTALK is to help organizations
benchmark their digital marketing maturity and identify areas of improvement.

We focus on benchmarking omnichannel marketing as a modern marketing technique that can

be used across different industry sectors beyond retail, where the term originated. At Smart
Insights, we define omnichannel marketing to include both managing customer experience and
marketing communications:

Planning and optimizing always-on and campaign-focused marketing communications tools integrated
across different customer lifecycle touchpoints to maximise leads and sales - all the while delivering a
seamless, integrated customer experience to encourage customer loyalty.

Successful omnichannel marketing requires a lot of 'moving parts' to work together seamlessly.
Our RACE customer lifecycle visual summarizes the range of omnichannel communications
activities that need to be orchestrated in a typical business-to-business industry sector. We
recommend reviewing the gap between communications you could deploy and optimize
against those you actually use.

The challenge is that, whilst many organizations are aware of omnichannel marketing and its
benefits, many are struggling to truly implement it - and this research supports this. Moving
towards an omnichannel approach is just part of a positive improvement process known as a
Digital Transformation programme - which we define as:

A staged plan to improve how Strategy, People, and Process are used to maximise the effectiveness and
profitability of digital marketing.

Uniquely, we commissioned this research when much of the globe is gripped by the coronavirus
pandemic. Our survey provides insight into its impact on digital marketing investments, and how
to mitigate this.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The research is supported by a survey from both Smart Insights and BrightTALK members based
around the world, which took place during November and December 2020. The survey had
578 respondents, the majority of which were from the United Kingdom or the United States.
Respondents were marketing managers of varying levels of seniority.

Our findings cover four areas:

Maturity of planning for marketing transformation

The majority of the companies surveyed don't currently have a clearly defined and integrated
omnichannel marketing communications strategy. In fact, just 37% claimed to have created and
implemented one.

We found that nearly half (48%) of respondents are using digital marketing but have no defined
digital marketing strategy whatsoever. This demonstrates a startling number of businesses
engaging in online marketing with little to no structure or focus on analysing results and
improving on them.

On a more positive note, 35% of respondents have taken the initiative to introduce a digital
transformation programme in the next 12 months and a further 27% have started their
organizations journey to Digital Transformation within the last two years.

r Good practice: Digital transformation is not a quick process, and many organizations will struggle to
know where to start. You can begin by auditing your current digital marketing activities, capabilities and
performance, and then use this to create a roadmap for digital transformation. This roadmap will be broken
down into achievable steps - each bringing you closer to optimized digital marketing maturity

Digital marketing maturity benchmarks

We asked companies to rate their digital capabilities from an initial level of 1 through to an
advanced ‘optimized’ level of 5 by referencing the Smart Insights capability grader for Digital
Marketing strategy and planning capability across each part of RACE - that is Plan, Reach,
Act, Convert and Engage. Considering planning activities, summarized in the visual below, the
majority of respondents don't have a sophisticated approach to their digital marketing.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

45% rated themselves at Stage 1 - Initial and 23% at Stage 2 - Managed. This shows the potential
for a more strategic approach to digital governance in many organizations

A review of each part of the customer lifecycle is covered in more detail later in this report, but
the results show that the majority of companies rate their capabilities at lower levels of 1 to 3 on
this scale of 1 to 5 for each of the stages - indicating plenty of room for improvement!

r Good practice: Making positive progress here is tied closely to the good practice tip above. Understanding
what your current capabilities may or may not be allows you to see clearly where your strengths and
weaknesses are. Only then can you prioritize how you wish to develop your organization's abilities and make
an appropriate case for investment in new activity.

The impact of Covid-19

The pandemic, unprecedented in recent times, has led to many marketing activities getting
scaled back or paused completely. In fact, we found that 40% of respondents had decreased
their marketing budget as a result of the virus.

However, in many industry sectors, investment in digital marketing has been a cost-effective
technique to mitigate the impact.

Digital marketing activities were reported to have increased for 41% of our respondents - with a
further 15% reporting a significant increase.

r Good practice: Benchmark the maturity of your digital marketing activities across the RACE customer
lifecycle compared to others in your sector and also take inspiration from out-of-sector competitors.

Industry maturity comparison

Each industry surveyed - and particularly the IT, High Tech and Telecomms sectors - reported an
increase in the use of webinars and virtual event technology - reflective of lockdown conditions
and a need for business to continue.

Marketers working in financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical and government/

education sectors also reported significantly increased use of webinar and virtual event
technology.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Research findings and recommendations

In common with all Learning Path and template 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 omnichannel 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, Smart Insights, December 2020

About Smart Insights

Smart Insights is a digital training and performance platform that supports individuals, teams
and organizations to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Actionable learning and
data-driven content covering the full customer lifecycle is provided in a dynamic learning
ecosystem to save marketers time, provide quality advice, frameworks and templates that are
proven to improve marketing processes and deliver results.

More than 150,000 Free members use our blog, sample marketing templates and twice weekly
Digital Marketing Essentials newsletter to follow best practices and keep up-to-date with the
developments that matter in digital marketing.

Thousands of Individual and Business members from over 170 countries use our premium
planning and management toolkits, Learning Paths templates, guides, and video courses to
map, plan, and manage their marketing using the Smart Insights RACE Growth Process and
Framework.

The Smart Insights RACE Growth Process enables you to define and implement a market leading
omnichannel marketing strategy focused on your customer lifecycle.

The RACE Framework is composed of 5 essential stages that break down into the 25 core
activities which must be optimized to achieve integrated marketing across your customer
lifecycle. Each of these areas is supported by comprehensive online training, tools and
templates which will help you upskill your team, plan and implement your strategy, and achieve
your goals.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Foreword
Today’s marketers sit at the unique intersection of two powerful pressure points. On the one
hand, customer needs and expectations are evolving more quickly than ever before. To be
successful in this fiercely competitive digital landscape, marketers must continue to innovate
content programs and build highly-personalized buyer experiences. Simultaneously, marketing
teams are increasingly tied to revenue-driving metrics, such as pipeline creation, won business,
and ROI.

In 2020, these already mounting pressures were compounded when the COVID-19 pandemic
arrived. While the effects have been vast - leaving no industry or country unscathed, marketers
have an incredible knack for reinvention. In light of budget cuts, event cancellations, and digital
fatigue, marketing teams have forged ahead to hit their goals during an undeniably challenging
and unpredictable time.

We are excited to partner with Smart Insights on the following report in an effort to better
understand the current scope and maturity of omnichannel marketing across industries. The
data suggests a vast opportunity for marketers to evolve and grow across people, process,
and technologies in the coming years. The findings also showcase how COVID-19 has impacted
digital marketing channels, specifically driving a surge in webinar and virtual event activity.

Since digital transformation is a never-ending process, it’s clear that strategic planning,
measurement and audience centricity will consistently provide the foundation for success. We
have no doubt that the most savvy marketing teams will set a new bar for what’s possible in this
digital-first environment.

Olivia Dassler, Manager, Marketing Programs, BrightTALK

About BrightTALK
BrightTALK is a B2B marketing platform for content marketing and demand generation.
Marketers use a single platform to engage professional audiences with webinars and virtual
events that deliver pipeline and revenue growth. With a global audience of 10M+ subscribers,
BrightTALK extends your reach to win more customers.

BrightTALK is the leader in online virtual events since 2008, hosting tens of thousands of
Community Summit events. These informative and inspirational industry-focused virtual
conferences allow sponsors to secure brand awareness, gain recognition as a thought leader
and boost access to ideal audiences.

The BrightTALK Academy features a library of marketing resources and materials on demand
generation and content marketing. Explore our collection of free content today.

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MATURITY OF PLANNING FOR
MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

Does your company have the appropriate strategy it needs

to perform?
Strategy and planning are as important in omnichannel marketing as in traditional marketing
communications. But with the world - and business - moving so fast, we often hear that it can be
easy to neglect this crucial phase in lieu of simply trying things and seeing if they work.

Digital marketing strategy usage

Consistent with our previous research reviewing the adoption of strategic digital planning,
our survey found that nearly half (48%) of respondents had no defined strategy at all. That's a
striking number of businesses that are'flying blind'.

The good news is that you're not alone and getting started with a new strategy can start today.
At Smart Insights, we're here to make it easy for you to take this step with our RACE Practical
Digital Strategy Learning Path.

Purely digital, multi or omnichannel marketing strategies?

As 40% of respondents stated that they do have a strategy and it is integrated with their wider
marketing strategy, we can surmise that these may even be multichannel or even omnichannel
marketing strategies.

Indeed, of the 40% of respondents that had a potentially multichannel marketing plan, three
quarters state that they have an omnichannel marketing plan.

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 MATURITY OF PLANNING FOR MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

However, this does leave a rather large proportion of 63% that are not capitalizing on the
many benefits an omnichannel marketing strategy can provide and who may require Digital
Transformation.

Digital Transformation - review, improve, repeat

Digital Transformation, as its name suggests, refers to the transformation of digital marketing
activities for the better. It describes what ought to be an ongoing process with regular review
sessions with the aim of assessing and then improving the contribution of digital marketing.

It’s important to correctly define the scope of digital marketing for your organization since too
often it can focus on and be driven by technology and miss the human element of improving
processes and developing skills and new ways of working.

This risk is highlighted in the Harvard Business Review article ‘Digital Transformation Is Not
About Technology’ which suggests that businesses will often:

‘Put the cart before the horse, focusing on a specific technology (“we need a machine-learning strategy!”)
rather than doing the hard work of fitting the change into the overall business strategy first. Not only
should they align tech investments with business goals — they should also lean more on insider knowledge
than outside consultants, acknowledge fears about job loss that those insiders may have, develop deep
knowledge of how chang-es will affect customer experience, and use process techniques borrowed from the
tech world (experimentation, prototyping, etc.) to facilitate change’.

We recommend the scope of transformation should consider the elements in our definition:

'A staged programme of organizational improvements to business models, People, Process and
Technologies used for integrated digital marketing in order to maximize the potential business contribution
of digital technology, data and media.'

Many organizations have adopted transformation, with 40% running programmes and, of
this group, 13% had been doing so for over two years. Transformation may not be relevant for

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smaller organizations or established businesses which trade exclusively online, so are already
digitally-enabled.

If you'd like to learn more about getting started with a Digital Transformation programme, take a
look at our Digital Transformation Learning Path.

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DIGITAL MARKETING MATURITY
BENCHMARKS

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 for all the
digital touchpoints that need to be managed.

We asked companies to rate their digital capabilities from an initial level of 1 through to an
advanced ‘optimized’ level of 5 by referencing the Smart Insights capability grader for Digital
Marketing strategy and planning capability which we referenced in the introduction.

Respondents were asked to score themselves on each of the five stages of the capability grader
- each stage refers to a particular element of our RACE Framework - that is, Plan, Reach, Act,
Convert, and Engage. You can rate and compare your score using these criteria using our free
online capability grader tool - available to all members.

Plan
In the graphic below, you'll find the criteria against which respondents were asked to score
themselves.

On the far left is the lowest level, 'Initial'. This represents organizations that haven't created any
form of plan or strategy, and struggle to prioritize activities effectively. On the far right, however,

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 DIGITAL MARKETING MATURITY BENCHMARKS

you'll see 'Quantified' and 'Optimized'.

Note: In this maturity benchmark, stage 3 ‘Defined’ is a good target for getting the foundations in place to
be competitive using digital marketing optimization. Companies who are stages 4 and 5 are making more
sophisticated use of optimization, but with Level 5 only necessary for the most advanced companies.

The majority of our respondents rated their capabilities at the lower end of the scale, with only
12% reporting 'Quantified' and 'Optimized' levels of maturity.

It is positive to see that the target level 'Defined' has been achieved by a sizable 23%. This means
they're using SMART goals with acquisition and revenue-based funnels, have an integrated
multichannel plan in place and, particularly for larger businesses, have a digital transformation
programme in place.

To truly perform at the planning stage, however, you must be as proactive as possible. There's
an old adage that says: "Whatever doesn't get measured, doesn't get managed", and it holds
true across all levels of RACE but, in particular, at the Plan stage.

Recommendations
Making a change at the Plan stage of the RACE Framework makes success at subsequent stages
easier - and it starts with a defined strategy based on qualified SMART goals based on forecasts
of return on investment in digital marketing activities. We recommend you spend time auditing
your digital marketing capabilities and prioritizing improvements. A classic SWOT/TOWS
analysis will help you prioritize.

From there, invest some time outlining your goals and objectives - both for digital marketing
and as business, if possible - and ensure they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and
Timely (SMART).

Updating your approach to Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning to the omnichannel

world is another vital step. Define detailed personas of your audience. What are their needs,
wants and expectations in terms of omnichannel experience and communications? A set of
defined customer personas and online value propositions will give you clarity in purpose and
messaging.

Reach

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Reach is aimed at growing your audience and building awareness of your products, services and
brand.

Failing to plan and perform at this stage will seriously limit your ability to to acheive leads and
sales at later points in the customer lifecycle. The capability criteria for Reach are in the graphic
below.

Our respondents predominantly reported having 'managed' level 2 capabilities, with 45% in this
category. This shows that a large number of organizations are developing capabilities but are yet
to take them further. This can be for a whole host of reasons, such as perceived difficulty versus
payoff, budget and resourcing issues, or a genuine lack of knowledge.

Whatever the reason, a Digital Transformation program will help you break through those
barriers and move onwards to increased success. Such a program will help you justify
investments for increased activity, mark out regular bite-size objectives to work towards (such as
improved reporting, testing mew media options) and improve your existing activity - all of which
will drive you further towards level 5 on the capability grader.

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 DIGITAL MARKETING MATURITY BENCHMARKS

Only 20% of respondents reported meeting level 3 'Defined' capabilities, however, and just 4%
have made it to a truly 'Optimized' level 5 - indicating a lot more work to be done and a lot of
missed opportunities as a result.

Recommendations
The more you make efforts to improve how you plan, execute and review your digital acquisition
activities that bring people to your site, the better you'll perform.

Analytics plays a big part at this stage, as it allows you to make more informed decisions based
on how effective different digital media channels and platforms are. You might do this through
Google Analytics, Google Ads Manager or even within your CRM. It can mean you carry on with a
certain technique, spend more time improving underperforming pages, or spend less budget on
keywords that don't convert.

Building channel specific performance dashboards is a great place to start as it gives many
benefits. For a start, reporting your everyday performance becomes a lot quicker and easier,
and giving oversight to other stakeholders is simple. Secondly, it gives you more time to
dedicate to thinking about what the figures mean for past, present and future performance.

Another crucial step to take is appropriately budgeting for acquisition cost and considering
customer lifetime value. Without a true understanding of a paid visitor's value, you'll be unable
to truly attribute the value of a click to the price you paid for it.

Similarly, setting up Page Value within Google Analytics can give you a useful oversight of how
important non-sales pages are for contributing to a conversion.

Act
It's useful to think of the 'Act' stage as being short for interaction, as that is its aim. The criteria
show that we are mainly assessing the effectiveness of customer journeys on the website and
the effectiveness of our content marketing and editorial strategy.

Level 2, or 'Managed' capabilities, comprises 46% of our respondents. Companies at this level
will be performing some activity towards improving interactions onsite, but will fall short of
maximizing their effort.

As with the majority of pursuits in digital marketing, improvement is an iterative process. To

understand how to increase leads you must first understand how you currently perform, asking
which are the pinch points and which are the key pieces of content or 'moments' that encourage
signup.

It can be tempting to focus immediately on macro-conversion to sales, but a more effective

approach is to first encourage micro-conversions or interactions through content marketing
or with your social media profiles. This can, for example, increase leads acquisition or build
audiences for email and retargeting/remarketing sequences.

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With a new understanding of what does and doesn't work onsite, you can use this to inform
new, ongoing content creation as part of an editorial calendar. This is a crucial part of a wider,
budgeted content marketing strategy.

The majority of respondents continue the trend, reporting only level 1 and 2 capabilities at the
stage. This means little to no understanding of customer journey and no content marketing
strategy. Any activity in these areas will be ad hoc and on a piecemeal basis.

The keys to progressing through the levels and improving capabilities are threefold:
1. Implementing a constant test and improve cycle
2. Thorough development of customer personas and mapping of their journey, as well as
implementing persona-specific content and page personalization
3. A lead-focussed, data-driven content marketing strategy, powered by SEO and tailored to
your individual personas

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Recommendations
There are two key things to ask yourself at this stage:
þ "What can I do to keep a visitor here? (on your site or social profiles)"
þ "How can I persuade these visitors to take the next step on their buying journey?"

The short answer to these questions is through content - specifically content that is useful,
persuasive and imperative to the user's needs.

The first step is to analyse and test your existing landing pages and lead generation content.
You'll need to balance cold, hard analytics data about how people are arriving at your pages
and how they are interacting when they are there. Beyond Google Analytics - which ought to
be the primary tool here - tools such as HotJar can grant immense insight into how people
navigate and interact with your site. You'll also need to ask whether you are adding value for a
user. Are you the answer to their problem? Can you provide something they're searching for?

You'll then need to take your insights and use them to guide an SEO driven content marketing
strategy. So, for example, that could mean understanding what type of persona favours
which type of content and using this insight to power organic keyword research. This keyword
research in turn supports more content creation which can be added into an editorial calendar,
with its creation factored into a budgeted strategy.

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Convert
We all think we know what conversion means, but do know what it takes to outperform your
peers?

Activities in the convert stage relate to conversions, and these can be both on- and offline. Your
focus should be on nurturing the leads you developed in the previous stage to develop purchase
intent.

Below you'll see below the activities - or lack of - that dictate each capability level.

We saw the highest number of respondents reporting level 1 capabilities at this stage than any
other, with over a quarter (27%). This doesn't mean these organizations are failing to convert,
rather that they're failing to maximize conversions and experience their growth potential.

Just 2% of respondents rated their capabilities at the highest level - a level that represents
a sophisticated approach to retargeting and lead nurturing, and factors in hallmarks of an
omnichannel approach by factoring in offline touchpoints.

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 DIGITAL MARKETING MATURITY BENCHMARKS

Recommendations
Getting started with a set of email retargeting sequences is a great place to make a difference
at this level without spending much more than time.

This sequence will flow from a welcome email on signup through to reminders, offer emails and
can even be automated to log callback requests with sales employees to get back in touch with
the customer.

Each step of the sequence is focussed on encouraging prospects to return and ultimately buy
from you. Although we’re focusing on digital marketing, the involvement of human assistance
to support conversion will be important in many sectors. Multichannel selling improvements
should also be reviewed.

Working on personalization and on-site conversion rate optimization (CRO) activity is also
recommended. As with many of the recommendations in this report, this functions on a test-
learn-refine approach, with a particular focus on A/B testing of key pages.

Finally, with Google's mobile first indexing having rolled out for the entire web this year, it's
imperative you work to improve the performance of your site for all visitors from mobile devices.
Your first port of call should be Google's free tool, Lighthouse, available in Chrome browsers.

Engage
We often see organizations focussing too heavily on acquiring new customers and neglecting
communications to encourage repeat business. Customers should be valued after they've
converted once since the possibility of more conversions and the positive effects of brand
loyalty and advocacy are many.

Despite the many benefits an effective Engage stage can bring, we again see only rudimentary
efforts in our survey results. 42% of respondents are scraping by with level 1 capabilities -
meaning only simple customer onboarding and experience research efforts.

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A quarter of respondents are failing to onboard customers or gauge their experiences, and may
only be engaging with social media marketing on a random, as and when, basis.

Just 19% of respondents are meeting the target level 3, ' Defined', meaning a long way to go for
the majority.

Recommendations
There are a number of activities that can contribute to your capabilities at this level.

Implementing an omnichannel focused customer feedback review process and displaying the
results is a good step. While many businesses will gain customer feedback about perceptions of
their brand and identify improvements, these often don’t have the detailed feedback on digital
experiences and communications to make improvements. This allows you to hear and act on
customer feedback and, once your ratings are good enough, you can display them on your site
as a trust-building factor. Setting up online panels of customers using services such as Qualtrics
or Vision Critical is an approach favoured by many larger brands.

Improving your email marketing is a major focus at this stage since email remains an effective
customer communications tool in many sectors, so conducting an audit of this activity is
an essential first step. We recommend starting with our Email Marketing and Automation
Learning Path.

Of equal importance and complexity is making improvements to your social media marketing
to improve advocacy and amplication by customers. This, again, starts with an audit. Our
Social Media Marketing Learning Path is a great place to start making a difference.

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THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC

The Coronavirus has impacted nearly every aspect of life in 2020, and business is no exception.
Marketers have had to deal with innumerable struggles - from the squeeze of reduced budgets
and furlough schemes to changing consumer habits.

How you approach marketing in a time like this can truly make or break a business but, since
there's no marketing playbook for a global pandemic, we wanted to understand just how the
Coronavirus has affected the marketing world.

We asked respondents what the effect of the pandemic had been on their overall marketing
budgets. What we found was 25% reporting a decreased marketing budget and a further 15%
stating they'd experience a significantly decreased marketing budget - a total of 40% reduced
budgets.

In the United States the unemployment rate peaked at an unprecedented level in April 2020
(14.7%) before declining to a still-elevated level in November (6.7%), so it's clear that the
economic impact of the Coronavirus is widespread and severe. For many, such figures show that
cutbacks have been necessary. Prioritization of all but critical activity is very likely for a large
number of organizations across the world.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Marketing is an essential activity - goods and services
are still needed, after all, so they'll still need marketing. Indeed, for the majority of respondents,
there has either been no change in budgeting or they have actually increased.

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 THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC

34% reported no change in their overall marketing budgets. It is harder to know place reasoning
on this compared to increases or decreases in budgets but, suffice to say, marketing was
performing well enough for these organizations to choose to weather the storm without making
any significant changes to their budgeting.

We found that 23% of respondents reported an increase in their overall marketing budgets, and
a further 4% saw a significant increase.

In August, IBM's US Retail Report posited that the pandemic had accelerated the already
significant trend of online shopping being favoured over physical shops by five years. This is
largely due to lockdowns, paranoia and a lot of spare time available for browsing and buying
online.

Our findings seem to reflect this increased shift towards online shopping, as the majority of
respondents (56%) actually reported an increased investment in digital marketing activities.

As we'll discuss in the next chapter, these increases aren't solely the reserve of e-commerce
organizations. As consumers are forced to look online, so too are marketers looking for leads in
all sorts of industries - from the automotive industry to manufacturing.

Only 20% of respondents reported a decrease in their digital marketing investments, which we
can speculate might be due to overall budget strains, an inability to adapt, or product specific
restrictions.

What remains to be seen once the pandemic is back under control and lockdowns are relaxed
is how long it takes for overall marketing budgets 'bounce back' - something we'll be keen to
report on as and when the time comes.

Our final question concerning the impact of Covid-19 focuses on how important webinar and
virtual event technology has been in supporting various business functions.

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 THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our findings show that such technology has increased dramatically in
importance, as life tries to carry on as normal from the confines of our homes.

Webinars as sources of demand generation and virtual events were clearly important for
our respondents as organizations made the shift to online events from physical ones. Many
organizations will have tried running webinars or virtual events for the first time during the
pandemic. Given their cost efficiency and ability to deliver results it's likely that these levels of
importance will remain high even after the pandemic eases for webinar newbies and seasoned
webinar hosts alike.

Whilst we see a narrow majority or respondents reporting no change in the importance they
place on demonstrating to prospects, there's still a sizable increase for many others.

Some organizations, due to the nature of their service or product, will still need some form of
visual contact with their clients and prospects, so webinar and virtual event tech is the perfect
solution for such an abrupt stop in feasible physical demos.

Again, some of these companies and industries will have needed such technology less than
others, accounting for the rise in importance for some and the lack of change for others.

Customer onboarding and online customer support have seen less of an overall increase in
importance than other categories across industries - but that doesn't mean to say they are any
less important than before.

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INDUSTRY MATURITY COMPARISON

A closer look
Across all industry groups people reported an increase in the importance of webinars and
virtual event technology for supporting their business functions during the pandemic however
when we look closer, we notice a small difference between industries but in some virtual
activities a significant difference is observed within specific industries.

The restriction of movement during the data gathering period due to COVID-19 has forced many
businesses who traditionally employed a more physical or face-to-face approach and have had
to shift to a more online presence.

The two areas which showed these differences most markedly were, not surprisingly, outward or
customer facing: demonstrations to prospects and customer onboarding.

Demonstration to prospects
The industry that reported the greatest increase in using technology was IT, High Tech and
Telecomms. This is most likely as a direct result of them having the infrastructure and processes
in place to scale up their operations during the initial stages of lockdown in various locations.
It also suggests that other industries have been searching for online solutions to improve their
own capacity to engage with their prospects. We would anticipate that this trend will continue
as platforms consolidate their customer base and new challenger platforms enter the market.

Financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical and government/education saw the next
biggest increase which could reasonably be attributable to the increased demand from
customers or potential customers for information relating specifically to YMYL information - that
is, information that refers to Your Money or Your Life.

If we look more closely at the increases reported within each industry we see a slightly different
picture with all industries significantly increasing their technology usage. Publishers or media
owners lead the way and this may be as a result of the lockdown restrictions and potentially
furlough whereby organizations are looking to keep employees engaged. It is notable that travel
and leisure which have been hit particularly hard by the restriction of movement have shown
one of the lowest increases. This may reflect the fact that not only are people not travelling but
they are more likely to research and book directly rather than engaging with a travel consultant.

Onboarding customers
IT, High Tech and Telecomms again lead the way across industries for increasing technology
use for onboarding which is in line with their increase for demonstrating to prospects and is a
natural follow on through the sales funnel post conversion.

Digital Marketing Maturity Benchmarks 2021

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 INDUSTRY MATURITY COMPARISON

Again, financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical and government/education saw the
next biggest increase which could reasonably be attributable to the current world situation.

If we look more closely at the increases reported within each industry we see a shift to
hospitality and e-commerce and retail leading the way in their reported increase in customer
onboarding.

This may reflect how these industries are changing their business models to increase or extend
their click and collect offerings and engage with their customers to retain business during
additional lockdowns and restrictions in general.

It is notable that the automotive industry shows increasing use of technology in both
demonstrations to prospects and onboarding which represents a significant shift in the
customer journey from consideration to purchase and beyond that necessarily takes into
account restrictions relating to traditional car sales showrooms. It could also be a reflection
on the fact that with more people working from home there is a real risk in declining sales as
people will not need to upgrade as often and may choose not to have a vehicle at all.

Investing without strategy

During our industry breakdown analysis, we found that a number of the companies among our
respondents had reported an increase in their technology investments - but had also answered
that had absolutely no digital marketing strategy. What, then, can be said of the strength of such
investment decisions?

We have mentioned several times about the importance of grounding investment decisions
within a Digital Transformation programme. In situations such as this, it's important to have
an idea of your base-level performance. Against this, you can then compare your projected
increased performance and weigh it against whatever the cost of investment would be. If the
cost outweighs the benefits, you'll need to revisit the plan.

If none of this has been done, it will be hard for those companies having invested without a
strategy to attribute any success to the investment, or to understand if they have made a loss as
a result.

Digital Marketing Maturity Benchmarks 2021

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