What Exactly is the New Reality?

Recently, Adweek published an article titled “CMO’s Face New Reality”, which chronicled the struggles of marketers post economic slowdown. It reported on the challenge marketers are facing with regard to engaging new and existing customers as marketing budgets decline. Improving customer retention and loyalty, acquiring new customers and increasing sales to current customers were named the three most important issues facing marketers today. Interestingly, these same marketers indicated that they were rather lackluster in leveraging digital marketing and performance strategies to achieve their core objectives. This is difficult to reconcile considering that the hallmark of online performance marketing is continuous improvement, growth and efficiency. What exactly is the new reality CMO’s are facing and is it reality after all? It shouldn’t be that marketing budgets need to decrease. It should be the realization that marketing budgets are no longer the litmus test for an effective campaign.

Online performance marketers know that improving customer retention, acquiring new customers and increasing current sales requires a multi-channel approach that maximizes spend through continuous improvement and optimization. Marketers who are gun shy about investing in digital may believe that such optimization will cost more than it is worth. If done right, shifting to an online performance model will ultimately demand more from your marketing spend. It will enable companies to effectively target and re-target new and current customers, get the most out of your leads database and promote growth through cost-efficiency. Performance marketers know this. It’s time they spread this knowledge to recession-wary CMOs.