Online marketing excites and puzzles CEOs

A new survey from the Chief Marketing Officer Council reports C-suite occupants want more out of online marketing — yet the path there is clouded with confusion.

For starters, only 9% of survey respondents say their companies have a “a highly evolved digital marketing model with a proven and clear path of evolution.” Moreover, 23% of respondents, composed of more than 200 marketing officers from businesses worldwide, report top executives at their firms are “still trying to understand where digital marketing fits within their overall business.”

More uncertainty: Barely one-third, 36%, report even a “random embrace of marketing point solutions,” and even those, according to the survey, aren't well integrated or unified.

Yet despite those issues, executives aren't oblivious to the importance of a coherent marketing strategy, the survey states. In fact, 20% of the respondents say they have a marketing mandate and a budget to execute; 42% say they have “strong interest” from the C-suite and 18% report that digital marketing is an agenda item in meetings with CEOs.

The disconnect, it seems, is in execution. “Clearly, there are lots of pins without the right pincushion to ensure digital marketing initiatives have the right underlying strategy, architecture, and technology infrastructure to meet management expectations,” CMO Council Executive Director Donovan Neale-May says in a release.