REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WorkSpan, a Business Network for marketing with partners, today announced the results of a new survey that looked at the tools marketing executives use to track campaigns, how effectively their marketing budgets are being used and how they measure the success of campaigns.
The survey was conducted online within the United States by Propeller Insights on behalf of WorkSpan November 7-13, 2017, among 100 marketing executives—44 percent VPs of marketing, 32 percent CMOs and 24 percent SVPs of marketing. The results were weighted to the U.S. census for age, gender, region and income.
The trials and tribulations of marketing with partners
The top three concerns of American marketing executives are digital marketing (87 percent), product marketing (80 percent) and partner marketing (67 percent)—although 83 percent of senior level marketers aren't using a partner management tool.
VPs, SVPs and CMOs unanimously agree that marketing with partners has benefits, prime among them:
- Increased lead generation — 58 percent
- Access to new potential customers — 50 percent
- New market segments — 50 percent
- Access to partner audiences and brand power — 48 percent
- Stronger media outreach & better social media content — 47 percent each
In terms of the pitfalls, marketing executives agree that the greatest challenges of marketing with partners are difficulty changing direction quickly to address market needs (35 percent), difficulty finding available partner marketing budgets (29 percent) and disagreement of focus (26 percent). Almost all—99 percent—of marketing executives think it would be valuable to have a better handle on joint budgets when marketing with partners—nearly half (46 percent) say it would be "extremely valuable."
"Companies need to engage with thriving ecosystems of partners to make themselves strategic and valuable for their ecosystem, but this creates many potential complications and inefficiencies," said Mayank Bawa, CEO and founder of WorkSpan. "We created WorkSpan to make joint marketing with partners accountable, innovative and impactful at scale—and to create unparalleled visibility throughout the process, making their campaigns more effective and helping them to put every cent of their marketing budgets to good use."
Marketing processes rife with inefficiencies
Fewer than half of marketing executives (46 percent) work with teams in the same office; the majority work with teams that are regional (31 percent), cross-country (12 percent) or international (11 percent). Ninety-three percent of marketing executives find it difficult to collaborate internationally. Scheduling calls across timezones was identified as a top difficulty (41 percent), but pushing centralized plans to regional teams (43 percent) was ranked the number one challenge.
Only 11 percent of marketing executives say their yearly marketing budget is spent effectively, while more than 1 in 10 (13 percent) say only 0-25 percent is, and 15 percent say more than half of their annual partner co-marketing funds go unspent.
More than a quarter of marketing executives (27 percent) use at least 10 different pieces of software to collaborate with marketing partners and colleagues, including tools for:
- Content sharing - 55 percent
- CRM - 40 percent
- Marketing automation - 39 percent
- AdTech - 36 percent
- Content marketing - 27 percent
Nearly half (47 percent) spend more than four hours each week in meetings to review the progress of marketing projects, and more than three quarters (78 percent) say they employ a person whose sole job is to track campaign progress.
Added Bawa: "Marketing teams choose WorkSpan to share marketing campaigns with partners, manage joint programs and solutions, track demand-gen performance, access marketing funds and much more."
When it comes to measuring the success of a given marketing campaign, top considerations for marketing executives include:
- Increased brand value - 59 percent
- Marketing qualified leads - 56 percent
- Revenue - 49 percent
- Opportunities created - 34 percent
- Increased net promoter score - 29 percent
Marketing executives think the Technology (44 percent), Banking/Finance (37 percent) and Telecommunications (36 percent) industries stand to benefit most from better coordinating their marketing efforts.
About WorkSpan
WorkSpan is a Marketing Network for ecosystems. We empower customers to discover, plan, fund, and measure joint marketing campaigns across their ecosystem and their partner's ecosystems on a shared platform to grow their business exponentially. We deliver secure transparency and mutual accountability across company boundaries with velocity, scalability, and trust. WorkSpan is a privately held company backed by Mayfield and is currently in use by global enterprises including Intel, SAP, CenturyLink, Infosys, and Lenovo. For more information, visit WorkSpan.com and follow @WorkSpan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
