How marketers compare digital today with the next 2-4 years

Despite the massive amount of digital and online tools that we see companies employing today, a recent survey by McKinsey suggests that marketing execs see it still as a largely untapped resource. Most agree that digital is a huge opportunity, but they are still trying to figure out how to improve their bottom line. The most pressing challenge is in producing and using customer insights which they hope to use to drive sales and engagement. But despite the amount of data available to them, their biggest challenge remains in measuring the impact of their tools online.

To date the biggest impact on companies has been their ability to interact and serve customers in a new manner followed by increasing access to data and insights and exploring new customer segments. However leveraging these insights is also the biggest challenge that marketers face. They cite constraints on funding and the lack of proper IT infrastructure and tools as the primary reasons. This is the big data challenge that companies are trying to solve and represents a huge frontier for innovation.

The way that marketers interact with customers is also set to change. Right now the biggest ways that marketers are reaching their customers are through their home page, email communication and social media sites. However in the next 2-4 years they see this changing dramatically, with Mobile and social leading the charge to connect with customers. Currently 11% of respondents are using mobile applications to connect, but using mobile to connect with customers in the next 2-4 years grows this number to 48%. Social moves from 39% to 47%. Homepages on the other hand take a big hit. Right now 78% of respondents are using home pages to primarily access their customers but that number drops to 28% in the next 2-4 years. This seems to indicate that while marketers see it as a necessity, their efforts are going to be following the customers through mobile and social, not waiting for them to come to the company.

Harnessing the big data challenge remains the biggest issue for marketers, but once properly harnessed these new channels will be exponentially more powerful than they are today.

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Digital_Marketing/What_marketers_say_about_working_online_McKinsey_Global_Survey_results_2892
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/Big_data_The_next_frontier_for_innovation