An industry survey of marketers has revealed 88% of respondents are either executing or considering cross-channel marketing in the next year, despite many of them having difficulty with the strategy.
Despite this, 79% of participants stated they needed more tools or support to implement multi-channel campaigns and 32% said they only understood cross-channel marketing in an elementary fashion, or not at all.
These statistics come in the wake of Nielsen’s Q3 2011 Social Media Report, in which it was revealed Australia is one of the most actively-engaged countries when it comes to social media. Australians spend more time visiting social networks and blogs than their counterparts in countries including the US and the UK, with each internet user averaging more than seven hours per month.
“Australian marketers understand they need to utilise a variety of digital channels like email, mobile, social, display and the web to reach their customers,” Simon O’Day, vice president of Responsys Asia Pacific said. “However, they are relying on a very simple level of personalisation and spending far too much time executing campaigns and not enough time being strategic.
“The amount of data now available from digital channels means marketers can target their audience in a highly personalised way that hasn’t been achievable before. However, if marketers want to see real returns from their cross-channel marketing efforts they need to find a way to still send highly personalised messages, but in an automated and orchestrated manner.”
The survey also revealed 81% of respondents had executed a Facebook campaign in the past 12 months, compared to only 70% implementing a campaign on Twitter in the same time frame. While Facebook remains the social platform of choice for Australian marketers, YouTube and LinkedIn are growing in importance, with 49% and 45% of respondents respectively mounting campaigns over these channels in the last year.
Newer social networks such as Google+ and Pinterest have not yet hit the top of marketers' lists as go-to promotional platforms, with only 30% of marketers implementing the use of Google+ in a campaign in the last 12 months and only 13% of marketers using Pinterest.
The survey was conducted by Responsys Inc at the Melbourne and Sydney ad:tech events in March, with 115 marketers participating.
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