With Australian companies feeling the pressure of digital disruption – a ‘damburst‘ if you will – new research has found three key areas that companies successful at digital marketing have in common.
The research indicates that a clear strategy, team-wide digital literacy, and using data to shape narratives inside a company correlated strongly with the digital success of Australia’s highest-achieving brands.
According to the research…
- 85% of Australian companies believe their organisation has been disrupted by digital;
- 51% are “somewhat confident” in their ability to execute their digital marketing strategy;
- Only 29% of companies were “highly confident” in their ability to execute their digital marketing strategy.
The most confident companies — labelled “Digital Achievers” in the report — are on average 59% more likely to have seen 20%+ revenue growth in the past 12 months, and 6.5 times less likely to have seen a headcount decline over the last 12 months.
Although the “Achievers” said they had more people and time to execute their strategy, there was no correlation with company size — meaning the key difference was that resources and time were being used more effectively.
As far as individual skills, the marketers surveyed feel the most confident in social media and email marketing and gave themselves the lowest marks in marketing automation and SEO.
The independent research was commissioned by the Australian-owned digital strategy agency, ntegrity, in partnership with McCrindle Research, as part of their annual research into the Australian digital marketing ecosystem. Researchers surveyed 319 Australian marketing professionals between January and April 2018.
It’s incredible isn’t it that the things that are most important to the success of an Australian business are the very factors that businesses are weak at. The tsunami of disruption that is coming down the pipe at all businesses is only growing in pace and veracity, yet people seem to be looking in the wrong direction. Heads in the sand.
Once the wave hits, as it will, and is, often you hear complaints from business sectors about how ‘unfair’ the competition is, or totally unrelated things are blamed, such as immigrants or trade deals or the number of seagulls on the pitch walking clockwise.
I suppose this breeds an industry of digital marketing agencies. Certainly, all those I know in this industry – who know what they are doing – are doing very well, thank you.
It’s going to be be interesting to see how this all pans out.
