Invest in the marketer experience to drive outsized outcomes

CMOs’ jobs have never been more complex. As consumer expectations skyrocket alongside rapid digital transformation, marketing creativity and execution took a big hit in the era of hybrid work.

Modern marketers are tasked with balancing the time required for creative ideation with the needs of clients, daily changes to the digital landscape and consumer demands for a more straightforward user experience. Consider that the average human attention span is only eight seconds, and you quickly realize the importance of creative marketing campaigns that are memorable, tell a story and evoke an emotional, human response.

But unfortunately, in a remote work environment, marketing teams are spending valuable time and mindshare getting organized around materials and less time doing the important, meaningful work: strategizing about how their creative ideas can enhance digital experiences, drive business outcomes and fuel bottom-line growth.

We recently surveyed over 900 global marketers to understand how exactly marketing creativity has suffered, how they overcame this struggle and the impact on teams and customers. What we found validates what we thought to be true – that the vast majority of marketers (92%) believe dispersed teams caused by remote or hybrid work impacted their ability to develop ideas and execute campaigns.

Importantly, this creativity disconnect doesn’t only impact marketing teams and their ability to produce strong results; it impacts the digital experience of the end-user, which is arguably the most important success metric for today’s brands. The truth is organizations cannot achieve their customer experience goals – or business goals – without having a digital-first mindset and fixing the marketer’s experience.

According to survey findings, for marketers, a digital experience means:

• Ensuring all necessary tools and information are accessible (50%)
• Using marketing and/or content marketing platforms to execute campaigns (49%)
• Using data collection and analysis to execute campaigns (41%)
• Collaborating with other teams to execute campaigns (37%)

The seamless management of content, assets and channels, as well as continuous team alignment on strategy, is what comprises the day-to-day marketer experience and, ultimately, the consumers’ experience with a brand. Marketing is increasingly dynamic and agile, and speed to market hinges on teams’ ability to effectively collaborate, experiment and communicate with each other. At its best, marketing should be a blend of art and science, leveraging technology and data tools to bring creative ideas to life.

At Optimizely, we’re committed to helping our customers stay agile in a competitive and constantly evolving market. We deeply understand the value of integrated martech that enables quicker project turnarounds, better segmentation and more effective digital collaboration.

Investing in the marketer experience is critical to success for today’s brands. With more products, services and noise than ever, marketers need the tools to effectively merge creativity with data science and continuously measure, design and optimize experiences to communicate with consumers on a human level and deliver outsized business outcomes.