New research reveals how the last 12 months has completely altered the way that many companies are approaching their digital marketing initiatives.
The study published by Banner Flow, which surveyed 200 senior marketing decision-makers from brands across Europe, offers key insights on in-house marketing as it continues to evolve.
The report reveals that 67% of brands have had to increase their digital marketing tactics with a whopping 97% of respondents having moved at least part of their digital marketing in-house – and nearly half began within the past 12 months.
Brands are quickly changing their approach and their main priorities are to build a more efficient data strategy to help with sales, efficient workflows and increasing ROI.
In-house marketing plays an important role in not only ensuring success, but continued resilience during what have been testing times.
Customer behaviour has also pushed in-house teams to make changes to their marketing efforts with nearly half (48%) of marketers saying that demand for content has increased over the past year.
Higher head count
More than half of those surveyed reported that they they’ve had to increase in-house headcount by as many as 5 people as 42% of respondents have increased the production of marketing collateral due to changing customer demands.
One of the biggest challenges for brands across the past year has been deciding the skill sets to develop in-house as well as building the appropriate structure for effective in-house workflow.
In particular, marketing teams are finding value by bringing in talent that specialises in digital/visual design (30%), social media strategy (28%) and online video (26%).
Demand for content creation
The demand for content is increasing. Notably, the top initiative for respondents working in financial services was increasing online influencer engagements (30%).
These results are aligned with a recent Onalytica Study that found the financial sector had the largest net increase in influencer marketing in 2021 at 56% – probably due to the financial strain the pandemic has placed on consumers. Retail and e-commerce had the highest investments in ad tech and martech (48%) and data-driven analytics to create personalised content (48%).
Technology is also driving innovation among in-house teams as tech is seen to be key in boosting creativity levels, while also allowing teams to use data more often and in more effective ways. Additionally, technology tools are improving overall collaboration and efficiency among teams.
Now is time to take stock and define how in-housing continues to evolve. As brands seek to achieve greater return on investment, in-housing is proving to help drive business growth given that more than three-quarters of the respondents in the survey reported that their digital marketing ROI has moderately or significantly increased since they began in-housing.
Sources:
The State of In-housing, Bannerflow
2021 B2B Influencer Compensation Report, onalytica
