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The Chartered Institute of Marketing's latest Marketing Trends Survey (Autumn 2009) reveals that marketers, UK-wide, continue to be quietly confident about the prospects for the UK economy over the next 12 months.
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The picture emerging from this ninth wave of Marketing Trends Survey, conducted for the Institute by Ipsos MORI, is that optimism has recovered strongly since the low point of last year's survey, and the first signs of optimism already seen in the previous wave six months ago appear to have been consolidated.
The more positive outlook is backed up by the financial conditions of the companies surveyed, which have improved compared to the previous wave: sales performances are up, marketing spend is up, redundancies are going down. However, those figures are far from where they were before the economic crisis. It seems that the recession has left many companies weaker and any recovery is proving slow and difficult, with many still struggling.
Commenting on the findings, David Thorp, director of research and professional development at The Chartered Institute of Marketing said, "2010 will certainly be an interesting year for marketers, with the continuing uncertainty about an economic recovery, the UK general election and an ever-growing presence of digital and social media. It's good to see that marketers are responding to customer needs by changing their products and services. For now, marketers are wisely concentrating their spend in the most effective activities, and still see the need to invest in training. As we move into the New Year, I'm convinced this more professional approach will stand them in good stead when the economy fully recovers."
The survey reveals that after the low point in autumn 2008, when 70% expected the economy to get worse versus just 11% who thought it would improve, sentiment has continued to brighten through spring and into autumn this year. In spring 2009, the proportion expecting conditions to worsen halved (to 34%) and now the latest wave of the Marketing Trends Survey sees around half (51%) expecting the economy to improve and just 12% expecting it to get worse in the next year.
There has also been a consolidation of positive sentiment among UK marketers about their own organisations' business prospects. When asked whether they thought that business would improve or get worse over the next 12 months, again around half (51%) say they expect it to improve against 16% who expect business to get worse. This improvement has been evident since the most difficult period, in autumn 2008, when nearly as many marketers (27%) thought their own companies' prospects were declining as thought they were improving (29%).
There appears to be a creeping recognition that organisations need to adapt in order to survive and prosper in the current environment. Nearly three-quarters of marketers (72%) agree that there has been a fundamental shift in their customers' current behaviours and spending patterns since the start of the recession.
Over half (53%) of marketers say that the recession has forced their company to change its products and/or services - an increase on the proportion stating this in spring 2009.
In addition, an increasing proportion are seeing potentially positive impacts of the economic downturn -over a third (36%) now say that the recession is opening up lots of opportunities for their company. This has risen from 28% in spring 2009.
Two marketers in five (21%) think the best R.O.I. is delivered by CRM activities. CRM's ROI benefits are particularly noted among those working in financial services/other services firms (27%). Second highest overall for ROI, is online advertising (12%) followed by email and public relations (both 11%).
Advertising - excluding online is most widely seen as delivering the worst R.O.I. - more than two-fifths (22%) rate it as worst. The second worst performer is sponsorship with one in ten (10%) of mentions.
As we have seen, CRM is used by 77% of the marketers taking part in this survey and accounts for an average of 10% of overall marketing spend.
Two-thirds (66%) of those using CRM think their marketing function has a high level of visibility over their entire organisation's relevant customer data. This proportion reaches 77% in retail, distribution and leisure companies but drops to 59% among public sector/charities.
Contact Information
Ray Jones
CIM
rayjones@cim.co.uk
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