Marketers who have spent the last year navigating the pandemic say they have been working to meet consumers where they are, which is increasingly online. This has fueled a push to alter digital strategies and work around a complicated data landscape, according to a Salesforce survey of more than 8,000 marketing leaders worldwide. 

According to the survey, 84% of respondents say customer expectations are changing their digital initiatives, with 34% struggling to innovate marketing technology, tactics and strategies. Social media and digital ads have been the most used tool to reach these audiences, with 91% of respondents leaning on these channels, as well as video, which 90% of respondents say they use. In comparison, 76% are tapping email, and 69% are turning to mobile channels. Artificial intelligence is also gaining momentum, with 60% of marketers saying they have a full-fledged AI strategy. 

While there’s been a surge in people adopting streaming TV services, just 53% of respondents say they are using over-the-top video or traditional TV as part of their marketing strategies. 

As brands experiment with new marketing strategies, how they measure results is also shifting, with 78% of respondents saying they have changed or reprioritized their key performance indicators. The three highest-growing KPIs include customer referral rates, customer acquisition costs, and content engagement. 

Data push 

Customer data is driving marketing efforts, with 78% of respondents saying data fuels their customer engagement. But the data landscape has certainly become more heated amid privacy lockdowns from Apple and Google. Updates to Apple’s iOS smartphone operating system restrict third-party cookies and other identifiers, and will eventually block email tracking and other “fingerprinting” techniques, while Google has committed to deprecating the third-party cookie, which helps track consumers around the internet. 

As the industry works to find replacements, marketers expect a 75% increase in the number of data sources between 2020 and 2022. And just 42% of respondents are fully satisfied with the quality of their data. 

The types of data that are most important to marketers have also changed, with known digital identities, which include email addresses and social IDs, becoming the most popular source of consumer data. It replaces transactional data, which moved down to the No. 2 slot from being the most popular in 2020.  

But despite the difficulties emerging around data, marketers are finding privacy is less of an issue, with 61% of respondents saying they go beyond regulations and standards to protect and respect consumer privacy, compared to 57% in 2020. Only 26% of respondents say that complying with privacy regulations is challenging, a drop from 32% last year. And 29% say balancing personalization with customer comfort is challenging, dropping from 33% last year.

Post-pandemic sentiment 

Heading into the summer, it appears marketers were more optimistic about the next year, with 66% expecting revenue growth over the next 12 to 18 months. But Salesforce conducted the survey from May to June, before renewed concerns over COVID-19 variants took hold. 

With the Delta variant having companies once again rethink their policies around returning to the office, Salesforce’s survey found 44% of marketers expect to work from an office full-time after the pandemic. 

The Salesforce State of Marketing report included a survey that polled 8,227 marketing experts from May to June, including managers, directors, VPs and chief marketing officers, across companies in North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.