Time Flies, But Where Does It Go?
When you learn that 57% of marketers wish they had more time in the day, the logical question to ask is, “What are they spending their time on?”
Three factors are having a big influence on how marketers spend their days: an expanded role, the increased need for measurement, and sprawling technology stacks.
Taking on a bigger role
Marketing ain’t what it used to be… in fact, it’s a whole lot more. Our study revealed that 29% of retail marketers are responsible for CX, CRM, digital marketing, branding, customer acquisition, and customer retention, all within a single role.
It’s no surprise marketers are wearing so many hats when department budgets have been slashed from 11% of revenue to just 6.4%. Furthermore, outsourced marketing is on the decline; roughly one third of activity has moved in-house (source: Gartner).
It’s easy for time to get away from you when you’re trying to do 5+ things at once.
Measuring impact
Marketing departments used to be seen mainly as cost centers that chewed through budgets, with little more than brand recognition to show for it. In recent years, however, businesses around the globe see marketing in a new light. This is especially true in the wake of Covid-19, when many brands either sank or swam based on their relative marketing strengths. Today, marketing is widely understood to be a revenue center, an essential contributor to the bottom-line.
This is a very, very good thing. This mindset leads to greater alignment between sales and marketing and more support for strategic marketing campaigns. However, it also has led to some big changes.
According to Retail Roadblocks, treating marketing as a revenue center “means more focus on business impact and ROI, while at a tactical level it means more time spent measuring, reporting, and exploring analytics.”
Managing technology stacks
Retail Roadblocks revealed that 41% of in-house marketers claim they’re losing time moving between the various technologies in their stacks, and 20% say their martech stack isn’t fit for purpose. Meanwhile, 85% say personalization is important to driving revenue and CX, while 29% say their inability to integrate technologies holds them back from personalizing their content. In fact, it’s reached the point where marketers are pouring more time into preparing and segmenting data than any other task.
To put all that in simpler terms, marketers are losing time doing essential work simply because the methods and tools they use are inefficient. Frustrating, isn’t it?
The problem is compounded by the sheer quantity of martech tools being used — one researcher estimated enterprises use an average of 91 marketing cloud services. (Granted, that was given a fairly broad definition of what “marketing cloud service” means.) Consider, too, that companies routinely change tools. Change-ups to tech mean users need to learn new interfaces and methodologies, all of which takes more time.
Time isn’t the only roadblock that’s tripping up retail marketers these days. To find out more about the biggest obstacles in your path, get the full Retail Roadblocks report!