Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL MARKETING EXPERTS

2015 IS THE YEAR OF… ?Take your pick of the latest marketing buzzwords or trends when trying to sum up the past year of Modern Marketing. We reached out to marketing experts from around the world to get their take on 2015.

But we added an extra requirement. Since Modern Marketers don’t make decisions with their gut—they do it with data—the synopsis needed to be supported by a published statistic or data point that validated what they saw and experienced in the past year.

It might have been the year that mobile finally overtook desktop computing, but it was also the year video exploded on social networks with their own—you guessed it—mobile apps.

Content marketing continued to grow, as did the marketing technology required to support all the content that companies are producing. Companies got more efficient, more focused on their customers, and more able to address metrics that matter.

But there is also a content gap, a conversion gap, an engagement gap, an attention gap, a talent gap, and even a mobile first gap. No matter what the statistics reveal about the companies that have grabbed the brass ring and succeeded with Modern Marketing, there are still those who are not there yet. The thoughts of these marketing experts can provide you that guidance.

Read on to see how these global marketing experts sum up the year that was in Modern Marketing. Does this reflect your 2015? Or was it the year of something else for you? Let us know on Twitter using #MMInsights.

Many of these same global marketing experts have also shared their thoughts on what will have the most impact in 2016. Get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 here.

Modern Marketing

Marketing Technology and Data

Content Marketing

Social Networks

Mobile

Customer Experience

Marketing Talent

Video

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 03Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MODERN MARKETING

SCOTT MONTY | Principal, Scott Monty Strategies @scottmonty | Website

Modern marketing (and communications) are incredibly disjointed: between mobile and desktop, social channels and company websites, and communications and marketing, they lack consistency and integration from the inside out, and on data from the outside in. (Data Source)

ELLE WOULFE | VP of Marketing, LookBookHQ @ellehwoulfe | Blog

The average human attention span in 2015 is 8.25 seconds. By contrast, the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. Marketers face more competition for their prospects’ attention than ever before. At the same time, the average attention span is getting shorter. Beyond giving distracted people a reason to click, marketers need to find ways to keep prospects engaged after they click. Once a prospect converts, you only have a brief moment to keep them tuned in and marketers need to do more with those moments. (Data Source)

ANDREW PEARSON | VP, Marketing, Windsor Circle @arjpearson | Website

According to a recent survey of leading online retailers, nearly 30% of respondents reported that less than 10% of their marketing budget is devoted to retaining existing customers. As it generally costs more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one and the average order value of repeat buyers is higher than a first time buyer ($52.50 for repeat buyers compared to $24.50 AOV of a 1st time buyer), customer retention is a valuable (and profitable) tactic to include in a retailer’s marketing strategy. (Data Source)

JIM EWEL | Blogger, AgileMarketing.Net @jimewel | Website

3,265. That’s the number of members in the San Francisco Agile Marketing meetup group. That’s up from about 30 in June of 2012 when we organized the SprintZero meeting that resulted in the Agile Marketing Manifesto. There are lots of other agile marketing meetup groups around the world, but none as large as the San Francisco group. (Data Source)

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 04Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MARKETING TECHNOLOGY AND DATA

ALP MIMAROGLU | Marketing Luminary, Symantec @alpmimar | Blog

85% of B2B marketers using marketing automation platforms feel that they’re not using them to their full potential. Modern marketing best practices are needed to fully utilize marketing technology systems. (Data Source)

MEAGEN EISENBERG | CMO, MongoDB @meisenberg | Website

Quality of leads, not quantity, is a great early indicator of modern marketing success. As organizations focus on marketing qualified leads (MQLs), as defined jointly by sales and marketing, their success rates improve. An average conversion of MQLs to sales-actioned leads is 36%, and best-in-class companies achieve 53% conversion. We know it is not the volume of leads that will build pipeline that sales can close, but the targets that want to buy and sales wants to talk with. (Data Source)

CARLOS HIDALGO | CEO, Annuitas @cahidalgo | Website

CMOs in the US expect marketing budgets to rise by 5.5% in the next 12 months. This highlights that organizations are spending more to better engage their customers and buyers. However, it is incumbent on CMOs that they are able to show the value of this increase and the impact they are having on pipeline and revenue. (Data Source)

“Organizations are spending more

to better engage their customers

and buyers.”

— CARLOS HIDALGO

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 05Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MARKETING TECHNOLOGY AND DATA

MATT HEINZ | President, Heinz Marketing Inc @heinzmarketing | Blog

40-45% of your prospects (in any industry) are “poised,” meaning they are qualified but not yet ready to buy. They have a need, but not the urgency. Your job as a marketer is to intensify, qualify and quantify that need—such that the prospect is compelled to commit to change.(Data Source)

KUSHAL SANGHVI | CEO, World Wide Open @kushalsanghvi

Marketers are now investing in integrating data to enable them make decisions in real time. Currently few marketers in India have invested in managing real-time data. As more and more people start connecting to the internet and accessing digital platforms through mobile, the amount of data has begun to explode. Many Indian businesses overwhelmed by the volume of data are falling back on traditional measurements. However these metrics are retrospective and do not empower businesses to track ongoing campaigns, react to live issues and make changes which could increase their return on marketing investments. They have now realized the importance of integrating data to gain valuable business insights. (Data Source)

TIM CRAWFORD | CIO, Strategic Advisor, AVOA @tcrawford | Website

The marketing landscape has exploded. In one year alone, the number of tools has doubled. This ‘exhaust’ is the result of growing demand in marketing automation and insights. (Data Source)

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 06Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MARKETING TECHNOLOGY AND DATA

JORDIE VAN RIJN | Emailmarketing and eCRM consultant, Emailmonday @jvanrijn | Blog

Companies that only adopt digital marketing perform 11% less than average. While companies that combine both strategic vision and embrace digital marketing perform 26% better than average. In this we see that both digital adoption and strategic vision are important. Companies that worked on digital features should focus on culture and strategy in 2016. (Data Source)

TIM MORAN | Director of Sales, Northeast, ZypMedia @timothymoran | Website

Modern marketing in 2015 is all about programmatic. Advanced targeting options, such as look-alike modeling and behavioral targeting / retargeting, along with deep metrics like viewability and view through are becoming standard fare. Considering research which estimates that 83% of display and video impressions purchased by 2017 will be programmatic, it’s become apparent that businesses of all sizes understand the need for precise targeting, while access to this technology is democratized by high-quality providers. (Data Source)

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 07Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

CONTENT MARKETING

ONE DATA POINT. THREE VIEWPOINTS.

70% of B2B marketers plan on producing more content over the next

12 months. (Data Source)

70%

JOE PULIZZI | Founder, Content Marketing Institute @JoePulizzi | Website

Modern marketing continues to be more about publishing than marketing. Although many have yet to formulate a documented strategy, it’s clear that the future of marketing success is rooted in building loyal audiences that know, like and trust us, which we do through consistent delivery of valuable content.

YOAV SCHWARTZ | CEO, Co-Founder, Uberflip @yostar | Website

This is a great sign that content marketing adoption continues to rise. But as more content is produced, more effort will be required to properly leverage that content to meet business objectives.

DOUG KESSLER | Co-founder, Creative Director, Velocity @dougkessler | Website

This sucker has gone mainstream. The bar is higher, wider and heavier. We’re all going to need better poles to vault it.

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 08Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

CONTENT MARKETING

JASON MILLER | Sr. Content Marketing Manager, LinkedIn @jasonmillerca | Blog

Inefficiency in content production results in an estimated $958 million each year in excessive spend for mid-to-large B2B companies. The focus on more content instead of more relevant content is leading to a tremendous amount of marketing assets that are underutilized or even worse, go completely unused. Marketers need to focus on more data driven decisions and ask themselves, do I create this damn piece of content or not? (Data Source)

MICHAEL BRENNER | Head of Strategy, NewsCred @BrennerMichael | Blog

60-70% of the content created in most marketing organizations goes completely unused. In 2015, when so much of our marketing activities and investments can be tracked and measured, this data point goes to the content problem inside every brand. Leading companies are investing in the programs and skills that deliver effective customer-based content marketing with a real return. (Data Source)

“More content instead of more relevant content

is leading to a tremendous

amount of marketing assets that are underutilized.”

— JASON MILLER

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 09Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

SOCIAL NETWORKS

MARK SCHAEFER | Executive Director, Schaefer Marketing Solutions @markwschaefer | Website

Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees versus a company. This is significant because the power in digital marketing is moving to “the share” and we need to understand those dynamics. This statistic demonstrates the shift in power from Madison Avenue and Wall Street to individual citizen influencers. (Data Source)

GABRIEL DABI-SCHWEBEL | CEO, 1MIN30 @1min30 | Blog

57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier. It is therefore necessary to provide much more content on the company website. Brands needs to become their own media and convert their audience into customers.(Data Source)

SCOTT STRATTEN | Chief Agitator, UnMarketing Inc @UnMarketing | Website

50 million people still visit MySpace each month. This describes the perfect current problem in modern marketing: if I don’t use it currently, no one does. (Data Source)

“Brands need to become their own media and convert their audience into

customers.”

— GABRIEL DABI-SCHWEBEL

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 10Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

NEAL SCHAFFER | Co-Founder, Social Tools Summit @nealschaffer | Website

Modern marketing faces a fragmented playing field, whether it’s web vs. mobile, organic vs. social, offline vs. online. Never before have audiences been “all over the place.” Just look at the active monthly users outside of Facebook and you can see that 20% to 30% of American adults are active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. A one-channel approach might be effective in terms of efficiency, but more and more modern marketing is forced to become a multiple channel affair, making marketing less efficient and more resource-intensive to deal with the different needs of the different channels. (Data Source)

BERNIE BORGES | Chief Find Officer, Find and Convert @bernieborges | Blog

With millennials making up close to 50% of the workforce, we’re seeing B2B vendor evaluation research conducted on social media including LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. (Data Source)

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 11Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MOBILE

BRIAN HONIGMAN | CEO, Content Marketing Consultant, Honigman Media @BrianHonigman | Website

73% of Facebook’s Q1 revenue was from mobile this year. This statistic points to two key trends from 2015. The first was that certain key players of previous years not only retained their power, but that these giants surged ahead. A second, integrally related point was that these key digital marketing players grew tremendously by effectively leveraging trends towards mobile. Mobile-fueled growth for established platforms helped define the marketing landscape of 2015. (Data Source)

KRISTIN CONNELL | Director, Digital Marketing, Deltek @kristinconnell | Profile

70% of mobile searches trigger an action within an hour. In 2015, mobile moved from an appetizer to an entree in terms of the digital marketing menu, largely driven by—wait for it—search visitors. Google raised the stakes with its “Mobilegeddon” update, but search visits aren’t limited to Google—most social sites are now search engines, too. In fact, I could slightly revise the statistic to read “70% of mobile searches + mobile sites + mobile content = an action triggered within an hour.” Spoiler alert: mobile will continue to be a digital marketing menu best seller. (Data Source)

ERIK QUALMAN | Pulitzer Prize Nominated Author, Equalman Inc. @equalman | Website

More people own a mobile device than own a toothbrush. Companies struggle with the concept of thinking mobile first. (Data Source)

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 12Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

JAY BAER | President, Convince & Convert @jaybaer | Website

80% of American consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. The convergence of marketing and customer service is upon us. We trust the opinions of total strangers—as long as those opinions are conveyed online. Customer service and customer experience IS the new marketing, because in an era where many products and services aren’t differentiated, how customers are treated and how they FEEL becomes the primary competitive advantage. (Data Source)

ROLAND SMART | VP of Social & Community Marketing, Oracle @rsmartly | Website

By 2016, 89% of companies expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience, versus 36% four years ago. This will lead to increasing pressure for companies to map the experience they offer customers across the customer lifecycle. Marketers will gain more credibility—and position themselves as the steward of customer experience—in 2016 if they can provide this service within the company.(Data Source)

“Customer service and customer

experience IS the new marketing.”

— JAY BAER

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 13Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

MARKETING TALENT

JODIE SANGSTER | CEO, ADMA @jodiesangster | Website

The industry’s skills and talent gap continues to be problematic, especially in the analytics area. 90% of managers said recruiting analysts was harder than, or as hard as, last year. The increasing demand for analytics across more business units and in more industries has boosted demand for these professionals, which continues to drive up salaries. The global trend of demand for talented analysts outstripping supply remains true in Australia with the majority of managers reporting difficulty in filling positions. This is an area we need to address through education and upskilling to ensure we have the future professionals required in this field. (Data Source)

NATE RIGGS | Founder & CEO, NR Media Group @nateriggs | Blog

With 70+ marketing automation software players, only about 4% of US businesses with 20 or more employees are users of marketing automation software. I believe the biggest challenge for modern marketing companies is not the availability of sophisticated software, but the availability of skilled and sophisticated marketing talent who understand how to successfully leverage it to attract new customers and actualize a return on investment. (Data Source)

Click to get The Future of Modern Marketing: 2016 14Modern Marketing Year in Review: 2015

VIDEO

JOHN J. WALL | Vice President of Marketing, EventHero @johnjwall | Website

Facebook grows to over 1.4 billion users and attacks video. Facebook video views skyrocketed to 315 billion in the first quarter of 2015. That’s still less than half YouTube’s 756 billion views. It’s not just a story of the numbers though. YouTube uses pre-rolls and banners over the content—on Facebook the content is the ad—a huge difference between entertaining and annoying. (Data Source)

MICHAEL A. STELZNER | CEO, Social Media Examiner @mike_stelzner | Website

Video marketing is hot! 2015 is the year of live video with the introduction of Meerkat, Periscope, Facebook Live and Blab. Live video broadcasts are going mainstream. A significant 57% of marketers use video in their marketing; however, 72% want to learn more about video marketing and plan on increasing their use of video. (Data Source)

HEIDI COHEN | Chief Content Officer, Actionable Marketing Guide @HeidiCohen | Website

2015 was the year of video. Video consumption has soared, driven in part by the introduction of Facebook video. Facebook video views passed YouTube video views. (Data Source) (marketingland.com/facebook-delivered-a-billion-more-desktop-video-views-than-facebook-103778) This has spurred the rise of other video based social media offerings like Periscope. More importantly, most of these video views have been mobile based. Instructional product videos and live, behind-the-scenes access are two ways to take advantage of these trends. (Data Source1) (Data Source2)

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PREDICTIONS FROM GLOBAL MARKETING EXPERTS

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