What you need to know:

• Growth, data strategies, brand development and purpose and digital transformation remain top marketing priorities.
• Privacy changes may be coming in hot, but most marketing and digital leaders don't believe their executive team understands the strategic importance of privacy with only a third believing their organisation has a clear plan to evolve in line with proposed changes.
• Ecommerce, like the economy generally, is flatlining in many categories while channel proliferation is showing no signs of a slowdown.
• Amid shrinking or static budgets, CMOs and digital heads are also grappling with changing consumer behaviours. But that also brings new competitive opportunities according to marketers from L'Oreal, Moose Toys, Latrobe University, Accent and Property Dollar who are looking to improve personalisation and the wider customer experience, as well as ensuring a more effective flow of data across the corporate ecosystem.
• L'Oreal also sees big wins from retail media.
• Across the board, martech utilisation remains subpar, and investments in skills and capabilities under-cooked. 

Martech utilisation remains subpar, most organisations are unprepared for looming privacy law challenges, and a surprising number of marketers are still early in their digital transformation journey, despite more than a decade's worth of investment generally across the economy, and a surge in transformation projects due to Covid. According to interviews with 250 Australian marketing, digital and ecom execs there are also glaring capability gaps across all three functions – especially within ecom, which is starting to flatline.

Arktic Fox and Six Degrees Executive's 2024 Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus report also finds actually implementing a growth agenda (not just talking about it), building out customer data strategies based on the better utilisation of first-party data, brand development and purpose and ongoing digital transformation all remain top priorities.

Among the report's key findings:

• The top priority for marketing and digital teams is driving the growth agenda. Building a customer data strategy and better utilising first party data, brand development and, purpose and digital transformation continued to feature prominently in the top five priorities. That’s consistent with the studies finding since the start of the decade.
• Priorities and challenges for B2B vs B2C brands differ demonstrably. 73 per cent of B2C execs said their biggest challenge is balancing long and short-term priorities. For B2B marketers that figure is just 33 per cent.
• Only one in four B2B brands is focussed on building a robust customer data strategy and better utilising first party data, compared with 44 per cent of B2C brands.
• Resource constraint is the biggest bugbear for B2B marketing at 67 per cent, compared to 48 per cent for B2C.
• Across the board, there’s been an increase in brands reporting falling budgets, from 35 per cent last year to 37 per cent this year and a bigger increase in those with flatline budget changes – up from 32 to 39 per cent over the year.
• CX, personalisation, online sales and lead generation, and martech utilisation are all now table stakes for marketing and digital teams to compete effectively in a modern market. Customer experience scored the highest importance rating at 87 per cent, whilst martech utilisation was deemed of lesser importance than the other areas, despite martech enabling delivery across the other three areas
• On personalisation, nearly twice as many B2C brands see personalisation as “very important” vs B2B brands.
• Most brands felt they were lagging behind the market in personalisation and martech utilisation, but the outlook was better for CX management and online sales and lead generation although there were hefty differences again between B2B and B2C firms. For instance, when it comes to martech utilisation a hefty 63 per cent of B2B marketers saw themselves as laggards compared to 37 per cent for B2C.
• Despite more than a decade of progress and a huge surge in digital investments during Covid, a surprisingly large number of respondents – almost half – said they were just starting out, or that it remains “early days” for them. According to the report, “The findings show that more than one in every three leaders are finding it difficult to deliver digital transformation due to expectations from the business to see short-term results.” Access to capabilities and skills – and to money to fund transformation are the biggest challenges.
• On privacy, companies whose executives understand the importance of adapting to new rules, whose marketing teams understand the privacy changes, and whose organisations have a clear plan on the path forward are in the minority.
• And on the tech du jour – generative AI – there are significant levels of interest and experimentation mostly around content creation and generation. But the report suggests current approaches are tactical, not strategic.

Retail media rises

Ultimately the drive to improve customer experiences, develop more sophisticated personalisation, and invest in martech is driven by changes in consumer behaviour, and ongoing competitive pressures. So it's little wonder that marketers and digital leaders Mi3 spoke with echoed much of the sentiment in the report.

At a macro level shopping habits continue to shift. L'Oreal Chief Digital Officer, Ryan Clark, pointed to studies that suggest 60 per cent of consumers now start their journey on Amazon when thinking about buying a product.

The firm has been significantly increasing the amount of spend and product it places with Amazon after initially fearing cannibalisation of its own D2C channels.

“I think similarly with that, we've got this rise of social commerce, particularly with Gen Z. 60 per cent of Gen Z ads are now being influenced through social media,” said Clark, with L'Oreal now also changing the way it works with retailers – and their burgeoning media businesses.

“Retailers have always historically been a conversion channel for brands like us. But now they're becoming more of this upper funnel discovery piece where they've started to unlock things like retailer media. One in three people are now discovering brands this way through the way that you can advertise on these retailer platforms.”

For brands, there are important considerations he said. “It's really about how you build those relationships and partnerships with retail media providers. Brand consistency and integrity are so important to L'Oreal. For us, it's about consistent brand messaging, ensuring that it's a similar brand experience across all those touchpoints, ensuring that our product information visuals… so consistency is really key.”

Last year L'Oreal's ecommerce revenues grew 9.5 per cent “slightly lower than the total of the group” to make up 27 per cent of total sales, CEO Nicolas Hieronimus told analysts on its February earnings call.

Strategic initiatives

Moose Toys operates in over 100 companies, but CMO Belinda Gruebner said her organisation is much earlier along the technology maturity curve, despite having already built significant international success.

Unlike many other marketers who are looking to consolidate marketing technology, Moose Toys is in the early stages of an aggressive digital transformation, a characteristic in common with many of those interviewed for the Arktic Fox study.

“We have been slow to invest in this space,” Gruebner told Mi3. She said the reason is not tardiness but rather market realities.

“The need for us to collect and have first-party market data and have a direct-to-consumer relationship was not a priority, because we were able to drive our business and our sales through our retail customers.”

But that has changed in the last 12 months.

“We’ve seen the importance of understanding that end consumer and the importance that influencers and ‘kidults’ are having on the growth in this category that has changed not only our mindset but also our investment.”

Over the next three to five years the company will invest heavily in tech across the enterprise.

“Part of the martech component is around what are the right tools and the partners that we need to bring into our business from a CRM or CDP perspective. But that also includes even some of the more basic things around the partners to support us on our payment gateways," she said. “We've not needed or had any of that in the past, so we're at the very start of our journey.”

For Latrobe University’s Stephen McGeachin, Director Web and Digital Experience, the key strategic initiatives over the next 12 months will build upon the foundational marketing automation program that the university has been implementing over the past 12 months. 

“The investment will continue to focus on expanding this deeper into the student lifecycle, increasing personalisation to offer tailored content and experiences based on both behaviour and demographic data,” per McGeachin.

He said the next 12 months will also focus on harnessing the power of data and AI to assist marketing decisions, create efficiencies, improve user experiences, and tap more into GenAI to create some of those experiences. 

“Richer integrations of our martech platforms with existing data systems will become a crucial component that will power both automation and personalisation through improved data connectivity and utilisation,” he added.

His experience also demonstrates the importance of getting the data architecture nailed down – which most CMOs, CDO,s and CIOs can relate to.

“It has been a real challenge in dealing with both legacy and disparate systems that store our student data. Over the years, we have added various technologies and platforms that have been bolted together as the immediate needs emerged.”

In the past, the absence of a fully cohesive architecture led to significant complications and a reliance on manual processes to enable even the basic personalised experiences across digital channels. 

“Despite these challenges, there has been a shared strong vision, desire, and appetite for improvement. Notably, major progress has been made with a three-year strategic plan between IT and marketing, aligning both functions on a clear path forward to enhance our data architecture and, consequently, our student experience.”

Accent Group’s Group GM, digital and marketing Deena Colman is likewise working on bringing everything together. “Accent Group has a long-standing commitment in prioritising the customer whether it’s how they engage in our many stores, on our many websites or with our CX team. This position is what recently led us to make the decision to bring on Amperity as our Customer Data Platform which will serve as the foundation for our data strategy transformation.”

Per Colman, “By enabling a single unified view of the customer, Amperity will allow us to gain deeper insights into our customers and how they are engaging within and across our many businesses.”

The CDP implementation represents the first step in a multilayered approach for Accent as it rebuilds its martech roadmap. “Once we have established the strong foundation of a unified customer view, we will then continue to invest in the right solutions around it that will enable action from the insights that Amperity provides. “

“Identifying the role each technology plays in the tech stack is also key to ensure there is no overlap and our teams are very clear on the role each has to play in their day-to-day.”

That raises the issue of ensuring brands have the skills and capabilities to get the best value from their investment. 

“This is an ongoing process for us to ensure we don’t end up with technology sitting there that isn’t maximised or worse yet, not utilised,” Colman told Mi3.

“We operate with a central team that drives the strategy, delivery, and support to empower the teams in the businesses to execute.”

Accent provides regular training sessions and workshops, encourages knowledge sharing between businesses, and champions user adoption across the board, she said

“Use cases are also built collaboratively with shared goals to ensure the right adoption and alignment. Furthermore, we also ensure that any new technology introductions are phased in the right way taking into consideration our current capabilities. This allows us to control our destiny by allowing optimal resource allocation and avoids paying for unused features within the tech.”

For his part, Latrobe’s McGeachin says a deep understanding of the benefits and potentials of the martech tools the team uses is essential. “To ensure our team can maximise their use and application of martech at both strategic and tactical levels, we are building internal capabilities through several key initiatives,” he said. 

“We are collaborating with agencies and implementation partners to upskill both IT teams and business users during the implementation and adoption of new tools, as well as during upgrades of existing ones. We have also dedicated time and budget specifically for team training and upskilling, recognising the critical importance of this investment in the growth and development of our people but also in using the martech to reach marketing and university objectives.”

Technical training

Rahul Bakaya has a strong pedigree in the startup/scale-up business space, and these days works as the Chief Growth Officer for real estate investment app Property Dollar.

Given the company is still relatively early in its maturity cycle, the martech needs are straightforward and the emphasis is on getting the most out of tools. He speaks highly of the training provided by the tools vendors themselves.

“I upskilled myself on Mixpanel. Same thing with HubSpot. Same as with Google Analytics and Meta ads and analytics.”

Bakaya says that in his experience vendors have excellent tutorial and certification programs. “Take Hubspot for instance, if you lock your doors for a month, you will come out as a genius. Their marketing platform and training centre is amazing. The same goes for (Adobe’s) Marketo.”

Capability crunch

But as organisations and teams scale, complexity inevitably follows – and that's often where the trouble begins.

To build ecommerce maturity and capability, they need to go beyond technical skills development, according to Arktic Fox’s Teresa Sperti.

“Soft skills are incredibly important to drive the change. Leaders and professionals need to be able to cast a clear vision, drive and embed the change through the business, gain endorsement and buy-in at every level, and champion the need to evolve.”

Without this ability, ecommerce will remain tactical, will not garner effective investment, and will not be viewed as core to delivering growth within the business, she suggested.

“Skills will also only get you so far. To build maturity in ecommerce, we need to build new capabilities as organisations in areas including (but not limited to) product content management, experience management, online merchandising and digital proposition development optimisation, new supply chain capabilities, and the list goes on.”

She said that building these involves re-orienting and evolving processes and ways of working.

“That means shifting the mindset, embedding tech, ensuring we have appropriate governance in place to deliver consistently.”

All of these are foundational elements to build strong capabilities in key areas to effectively manage ecommerce and maximise a brand's presence on the digital shelf.

Given that the standout challenge identified by Sperti’s study is the shortfall in the very skills and capabilities she outlines, that suggests there is still a hard row to hoe for many marketers increasingly being asked to do more with less.