More than three quarters (78%) of CEOs would increase digital marketing budgets if marketers were able to demonstrate that their online activities are having a direct impact on sales, according to new research.
The study, from Bango, surveyed over 200 CEOs, looking into current C-suite attitudes to marketing budgets.
Unfortunately, while CEOs are open to increasing budgets, they currently feel that the majority of digital marketing activities cannot be tied back to their business’ bottom lines.
Bango’s research found that 62% of CEOs feel that too much marketing budget is wasted on activities that don’t deliver meaningful results, while 60% feel that the impact of digital tactics like social media marketing have been exaggerated.
Bango’s report shows that while CEOs feel they’ve been let down by social media in the past, they would be willing to invest more budget if marketers could prove they are reaching the right audiences and are therefore having a direct impact on sales.
In fact, 71% said they would increase their marketing departments’ budgets if activities could be more directly targeted towards those who buy.
CMO at Bango and co-author of the report, Anil Malhotra, explains: “CEOs are concerned primiarly with fundamental business KPIs, most obviously activites that help increase sales. Marketers, however, have a tendancy to justify their activites by presenting results through a variety of digital marketing metrics, but often these stats are too far removed from business fundamentals and – ultimately – meaningless to the board.
“If marketers want to secure bigger budgets, they need to align their digital marketing campaigns to sales and revenue outcomes. Targeting based on purchase behavior enables marketers to directly tie their activities to the business results that matter most to the board – sales.”
To achieve this, Bango’s report advocates the adoption of ‘Purchase Behaviour Targeting’ across the digital marketing mix, a niche targeting function introduced by platforms like Facebook, which can be supplemented with purchasing data from a range of consumer channels.
