Online marketing needs better accountability and integration with offline campaigns, new survey finds

Economist Intelligence Unit: finds that businesses will focus on international over domestic markets in the next three years. Leading companies recognise the growing need to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, but admit that they spend little executive time doing it.

• Half of all respondents think that the level of accountability for all marketing activities is rising dramatically.

• Executives spend less time assessing the performance of marketing campaigns than either planning or executing them.

• Between a third and a half say they don't know how to measure the impact of several of their online marketing activities either.

The survey - sponsored by Google - also showed that leading companies believe marketing will play an increasing strategic role in their business, and that online advertising will be central to major campaigns. Over half believe that brand advertising will drive that growth.

• 45% of respondents believe that the marketing department will become more deeply involved in decisions regarding strategic partnerships.

• 72% of respondents say that in two years' time online will be the media platform that determines how major interactive marketing campaigns are planned and executed (up from only 28% of respondents who believe that today).

• 29% of companies will re-allocate their marketing budget from offline to online advertising and promotion.

Online marketing is rapidly maturing, but companies have to make sure their actions catch-up with their aspirations. Executives must not lose sight of the need for specific yardsticks of success in every part of their marketing budget.

The survey also detected little apparent co-ordination between online ad spending with traditional media budget allocations. Integration of online and offline marketing remains the exception rather than the rule, with 52% of executives admitting their online and offline marketing efforts either run in parallel or are not integrated at all.

Google indicated that more needed to be done if companies were to exploit the potential for online marketing.

More than 40% of executives say they will increase online advertising by adding new budget in the next two years. Yet, there exists a paradox between how deeply executives believe in the power of online marketing, and how much work is necessary to deliver on these expectations.

More than 200 companies participated in the survey, measuring attitudes to online marketing and advertising. Of those companies, 70 of them generate annual revenues of at least $5bn.

The global study comprised 228 executives in the United States, Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Regional differences were negligible. The Sixth Annual European Marketing Directors Summit: Steering the business through a changing global market place

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