As 2017 comes barrelling towards us, so does the flurry of digital marketing predictions. Ed Preedy (pictured below), MD for Europe, GumGum explains to ExchangeWire how recent research carried out by GumGum shows how the consumer still does (and must) sit at the heart.

A lot of ink (or pixels, really) is dedicated to the ways in which marketing organisations are evolving. We’re told that the CMO now has a seat at the CEO’s table, and marketing tentacles now reach into every nook and cranny of the enterprise. Marketing organisations are no longer made up exclusively of creative types; they’re staffed with just as many data geeks and junkies.

What’s driving this evolution? Can the digital revolution take credit for all of these changes? To find out, in February and March of this year, we surveyed 240 marketing executives of Fortune 500 brands in the US. In some ways, their responses are wholly predictable; in other ways, they were anything but.

What makes an organisation great?

The first thing we wanted to know is, "What makes a marketing organisation great?" Not surprisingly, customer- (85%) and data-centricity (66%) top the list. While the customer has always been critical to the brand, the digital revolution has upped the game. Once upon a time, brands could decide what consumers wanted, and they controlled the dialog via one-way advertising. Social media obliterated that equation, however, and any brand worth its salt knows that the customer is in the driver’s seat.

Ed Preedy, MD Europe, GumGum

Of course, listening carefully to the customer has its benefits: consumers are more than willing to share their priorities via social media and other channels. Smart brands can use that insight to inform their product roadmap and advertising strategies. Data is critical for this endeavour; so it’s no surprise that marketers are now positively obsessed with bits and bytes.

Slightly more than half (57%) say that great marketing organisations are “digital-first”. This is a surprisingly low percentage, given all that’s said on the topic by the pundit class. For example, Forrester Research predicts that by 2019, marketers will collectively spend USD$100bn (£77bn) on digital advertising, trumping television advertising.

It is interesting to note that, although organisational flexibility ranked relatively high as a potential attribute to greatness (43%), both tech know-how and media focus scored quite low. These latter numbers may be a bit misleading, however. As discussed below, tech decisions are often left to other departments, so marketers may not consider them significant drivers of change. As for media focus, it’s long been marketing’s bailiwick, something at which they already excel.

Trends of the future

We also asked the marketers to rank trends they felt will have the greatest impact on their organisations. Innovation initiatives (68%), analytics & measurement (65%), mobile initiatives (64%), and content marketing (64%) were viewed as having the greatest effect.

That content marketing ranked fourth is a bit of a surprise, given the role it plays in consumer engagement, and the rise in the visual web, which taps into the customer’s willingness to serve as a brand’s ambassador, as Apple’s Shot on a iPhone campaign clearly illustrates.

Technology

Technologies issues, such as infrastructure investments (55%) and marketing automation (54%), are ranked as a second tier of trends that will affect a marketer’s life on a daily basis. Is this a surprise, or not? How can marketing automation not top the list?

The relatively low ranking of tech savviness may be an indication that, although some technology knowledge is a baseline requirement for marketing organisations today, marketers don’t see their organisations as driving and owning technology decision-making.

That said, not every respondent agreed that technology is less important. As one CMO we talked to noted: “It would be a shame if a creative person today didn’t understand the ins and outs of technology, or even digital advertising, or even how companies are thinking about technology as part of their organisation, and whether or not that’s a key for scale.”

Bread & butter marketing

Key marketing practices, such as branding, paid media, and social media optimisation, were all predicted to have a more or less equal effect. Perhaps focus on consumer-centric marketing, coupled with a more fluid organisational approach to marketing, is pushing marketers further from the 'traditional' focus on paid, owned, and earned media groupings.

Bumps in the road

Of course, none of these future tendencies are without challenges. When we asked participants to anticipate the biggest roadblocks to optimal performance, shifting corporate priorities (34%) and budget challenges (22%) emerged as the top picks.

Most marketers (87%) seem to be more or less comfortable with the unstable nature of the marketing landscape for the foreseeable future and do not view this as a significant roadblock to success. Approximately 1-in-10 of those surveyed cited organisational inertia as a key point for concern.

So, what do all of these trends mean for marketers as they look forward to the future?

To get a sense, we asked them to pick one word or phrase that best describes the marketing organisation of tomorrow. Not surprisingly, our respondents described an organisation that’s vibrant and highly adaptive. Some of the frequent responses were 'dynamic', 'nimble', 'fluid', and 'innovative'. All of these descriptors point to a future that’s fully digital-driven, in which marketers leverage technology that allows them to monitor consumer sentiment, and respond at unprecedented speeds.