While marketers are pumping out more campaigns, 87% report experiencing issues with campaign performance in the past 12 months, according to recent Gartner data. A little under half (45%) report potentially needing to terminate a campaign early due to poor performance.
With marketing budgets under increased scrutiny, problems related to campaign performance can add an extra layer of stress for marketers. Concerns around channel fragmentation and the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) have further complicated the picture for marketers.
“[Issues are caused by] a combination of the volume of campaigns, as well as the amount of channel fragmentation and data silos that just exist as a natural byproduct of the digital world that marketers are operating in,” said Greg Carlucci, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Combining those into singular stories can be challenging.”
Insights were drawn from the “2024 Gartner Channel Campaign Management Survey” and the “2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey.” The channel and campaign survey was conducted online between July and mid-September 2024. There were 418 respondents, 194 from North America and 224 from Europe. While a variety of industries were represented, all of those surveyed were senior marketing decision makers. The CMO spend survey was conducted online between February and March 2024. Of the 395 surveyed, 200 came from North America and 195 from Europe.
Higher volume, more issues
With a 31% increase in the number of campaigns year-over-year, marketers are forced to do more with budgets that are increasingly under scrutiny. Additionally, only 45% of marketing budgets goes toward campaigns, while 55% goes toward technology and transformation, according to the research.
However, while marketers are producing more campaigns, they are also experiencing significant challenges. Measuring campaign performance is one particularly thorny problem reported by respondents. Seventy percent report facing moderate to significant challenges when trying to measure ROI and 66% report struggling to demonstrate the impact of campaigns to key stakeholders.
“I think the benefit of reporting is the ability to get extremely granular on outcomes or actions that customers are taking,” said Carlucci. “However, translating different metric types into singular business outcomes can be more difficult given there are a combination of metrics, channels are different and there's influence among stakeholders on marketing campaigns.”
With channel fragmentation, managing campaigns is costly. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed said they struggle to find the budget to adequately manage campaign resources. Even then, 60% of respondents say they struggle to align campaign strategy with business objectives.
The whole pie
While marketers face persistent challenges, there are things they can do to optimize campaign performance while minimizing challenges and set backs. A few best practices are evident among the 19% of respondents identified as “high performers” and who reported regularly meeting campaign goals and driving expected levels of engagement and awareness.
This group tended to approach campaigns holistically and prioritize c-suite relationships. Cross-department relationships are key to campaign success, with 25% of respondents saying sales teams hinder their ability to carry out campaigns effectively. High-performing brands are also more likely to embrace new technologies, such as AI.
“I think the biggest differences between the high performers and the rest were centered around channel strategy and objectives, as well as governance around what the roles are for the channels,” said Carlucci. “I think if I were to summarize it, it includes channel strategy and objectives, channel management, customer journey orchestration and routes to market.”
