Marketers See the Holes…and Want Them Plugged!
It’s one thing when agencies recognize their shortcomings and try to address them…but it’s a completely different story when marketers see the holes for the agencies. It’s what seems to be happening today.
We recently released our latest survey report: The 2014 Agency-Marketer Business Report. The survey was completed by 110 senior level marketers and 220 marketing agency executives during August, 2014.
In the report, Marketers reveal their biggest concerns about marketing agencies today: Their lack of focus on meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) and their lack of foundation in analytics.
40% of marketers surveyed said “Lack of Foundation in Analytics” and 38% said “Lack of Focus on Meaningful KPIs” were the biggest deficiencies of marketing agencies today.
With marketers under ever increasing pressure to know how effective their dollars are being spent and prove out the return on their marketing investments, marketing agencies that don’t take the time to beef up their ability to measure and track performance will likely go the way of the dinosaurs.
We see this all the time with marketers that come to us looking for a new agency. Their current agency isn’t helping them stay ahead of the digital and analytics curve and they feel like they’re losing ground.
Back in the day when digital firms first came to market, being creative was good enough. As the space got more competitive and marketers quickly realized that digital was just “another platform” that needed to be integrated with all the other platforms they used, the pressures on digital-only firms grew.
Today, being a smart digital firm means a whole lot more.
It’s important that firms aren’t just measuring “likes” and “follows” – but rather measuring things that are more actionable relative to sales. And while it’s nice that an agency can buy digital media, it’s more important in today’s world that agencies understand the value of things like programmatic marketing and re-targeting in order to stay steps ahead of a marketer’s competitive set.
If you aren’t talking these things today, the hole needs to be filled.
Mark Sneider
Mark is a 30-year veteran of the consumer packaged goods, advertising, and marketing service industry. Mark started his career at DDB Needham in Chicago prior to earning his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Business School at Northwestern where he majored in Marketing and Economics. Prior to starting RSW/US in 2005, Mark was General Manager for AcuPOLL, a global research consultancy. Sneider worked in Marketing for S.C. Johnson and KAO Brands. Sneider has been invited to speak at numerous Agency events and network conferences domestically and internationally including the 4A’s, Magnet, NAMA, TAAN, and MCAN. Sneider has been featured in prominent industry publications including Adweek, Media Post, e-Marketer, and Forbes. When not working (which often seems like not often), Mark likes to run miles, go to church, and just chill with a hard copy issue of Fast Company.
