While investments remain, companies are concentrating their efforts around strong components: the GDPR as the backbone of digital development, customer acquisition and retention to ensure business continuity, and teams as the cornerstone of efficient action. . The Dékuple study also highlights future priorities such as artificial intelligence and responsible marketing.
The impacts of the economic context
Halfway through the year, marketing decision-makers are already ready to review their priorities for 61% of them with regard to the economic challenges to come. A situation that is more marked for companies with more than 1 billion euros in turnover, with a percentage that rises to 75%.
More specifically concerning digital investments, only 31% will increase them and for 59%, they will remain stable. Nevertheless, the percentage of increase in digital investments is higher for large companies: 43%.
One can imagine that for these large companies achieving more than 1 billion euros in turnover, it will be a question of continuing to invest while carrying out more adjusted arbitrations.
Regulation and GDPR remain at the heart of concerns
If the different trends available to marketing decision-makers are numerous and varied, the GDPR compliance of customer data remains the number 1 priority for 84%, regardless of the size of the company. A result that may seem surprising for a subject that, on a digital scale, is old.
However, the issue that emerges here is to have to meet regulatory requirements while continuing to generate digital growth. Indeed, this result can be compared to a question on the influence of current regulatory issues (end of third-party cookies, Digital Service Act, AI regulation, GDPR, climate law, etc.) on their actions in terms of digital marketing: with a “no” at 51%, this shows that marketing decision-makers undoubtedly have a good technical command of regulatory issues.
Develop acquisition and improve customer loyalty, challenges that remain major
The economic context also leads to the marked prioritization of 2 areas: the development of customer acquisition at 63%, closely followed by the improvement of customer loyalty at 61%. The acquisition of new customers remains a major axis of growth, proof of this is the desire to invest in influence and content marketing for 75% of respondents and to arbitrate their digital levers in favor of content marketing (80% in favor of an increase) and SEO (70% in favor of an increase) in the event of a prolonged economic crisis. It should nevertheless be emphasized that this desire to put customer acquisition first is more marked for large companies with more than 1 billion euros in turnover (86% vs. 43% for the others).
The 2nd item relating to loyalty is also to be underlined because it is a decisive issue at a time when customers are likely to make trade-offs in their purchases. Moreover, for 89% of marketing decision-makers, it is on this loyalty issue that artificial intelligence can help optimize their digital strategy.
The central role of teams and the organization
To meet future challenges, the priority is mainly on two operational levers: launch intensive training to support the skills development of the teams in place at 80%, followed by 67% of the strengthening of the link between the marketing/digital teams and the IT team. These 2 main operational axes of the strategy of the companies questioned show how much the teams and the organization are central in an objective of integration and greater diffusion of digital.
Responsible marketing in the making
Concerning the subject of responsible marketing, 89% of respondents think that responsible marketing will be, in the future, a commercial argument with customers and consumers. However, there is still significant room for improvement with regard to the issues that are shaking our society. The average score of current commitment of companies surveyed on responsible marketing is only 5.6/10. However, there is a disparity between companies with less than 1 billion euros in turnover: 4.97 and those with more than 1 billion euros in turnover: 6.39. Moreover, it is not sustainable development or ecological values that are cited as driving the digital communication of the companies surveyed in the coming months, but service values (82%) and societal values (79%).
The next big priorities
Data is clearly at the center of investments to improve marketing impact. Thus artificial intelligence appears at 70% as a priority followed by data marketing and predictive at 52%. Conversely, the trending topics of blockchain, NFT and cryptocurrency come at the very bottom of the table and collect just 2%.
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