Arktic Fox Archives - MARKETECH APAC

Securing executive buy-in is critical for marketers is the fuel that propels organisational transformation. When leadership fully embraces the journey, they not only pave the way for change but also inspire their teams to rise to the challenge.

However, a recent Arktic Fox’s Digital & Marketing In Focus study shows we still have a long way to go. It highlights a glaring obstacle to this transformation.

“What we found is that while organisations are embracing digital transformation – not enough are succeeding,” says Teresa Sperti, Director/Founder of Arktic Fox. “Nearly 40 per cent of leaders stated that one of the key difficulties they face is senior leadership understanding and buy-in. This topped the list.”

This is a real problem, she says, adding, “A lack of executive knowledge and understanding when it comes to digital makes it harder to drive alignment and focus. This results in less investment while increasing the likelihood that more leaders and teams work against, not for, the change.”

Executive buy-in barriers: Why the resistance?

Despite its undeniable importance, securing executive buy-in remains the primary hurdle for leaders. Sperti says this hurdle can be attributed to a combination of factors, namely:

Misguided beliefs: There is still a belief that to solve for digital transformation, organisations can hire one executive that is responsible for driving the change.

“Not my job” reluctance: Executives and boards don’t always necessarily perceive it is their role to understand the digital space, so they fail to educate themselves on what is occurring in the market.

Persistent legacy mindsets: Digital is still, within many legacy organisations, not seen as how business is done in the modern age.

Knowledge gap: Executives aren’t necessarily willing to admit their lack of knowledge and expertise, which inhibits their learning.

“Our research also revealed that the second biggest barrier to driving digital transformation was related to skills and capability of teams and securing investment,” Sperti shares. “We see this all the time with teams. We often work with leadership teams on new strategies, and there is enthusiasm around the strategy. But often, the organisation isn’t prepared to take the leap and invest to the level it needs to, thus hampering the ability to evolve.”

Overcoming executive resistance for transformation projects that thrive

There are four critical areas where executive decision-making and prioritisation will have a significant impact on future investments:

Prioritisation: Balancing short-term vs. long-term initiatives
Privacy: Preparing for changes privacy regulations and a cookieless world
Personalisation: Investing in the right tools to understand your customer and build a clear value exchange
People: Enabling teams and developing skills to overcome internal skill gaps

Let’s start with prioritisation. When it comes to balancing short- and long-term initiatives, executives must understand what projects and investments will make the greatest impact on the organisation.

Drawing from the insights of industry pioneers like Les Binet and Peter Field from their research, The Long and the Short of It, executives can guide their decision-making to strike the right equilibrium between immediate results and long-term brand building, ensuring sustained success in today’s dynamic business landscape.

Striking the right balance for maximum impact

This means acknowledging that while short-term initiatives can deliver quick wins and boost revenue, long-term brand equity and customer loyalty are equally vital for enduring prosperity. Sperti’s research revealed that the key priority for 78 per cent of leaders is driving growth. Building a customer data strategy and better utilisation of first-party data came in as the second most important priority for the year ahead.

Sperti shares, “For our consulting work, often partnering at heads of level/chief-level executives, we still see far too many leaders and teams focusing on campaign and channel-based metrics as opposed to customer metrics and metrics that drive topline and bottom-line growth. Our job as marketing or digital leaders is to shift customer behaviour to drive market share growth to influence the bottom line.”

When asked to reflect on her two decades of experience client-side, gaining her perspective on how to help businesses see the value of long-term projects, Sperti says the key is to focus on the end game. “First, you need to understand how the executive makes investment decisions and the financial metrics that projects need to hit to garner investment.

“In larger organisations, in particular, projects are assessed against metrics like NPV (net present value) and IRR (internal rate of return) and return and finance are looking for investments that meet their minimum benchmarks – alongside other metrics that are good for business like improving CX (customer experience).

“Partnering closely with finance to develop the business case is critical,” she continues. “Engage them early on and get them to become advocates for your project and business case. You also need to paint a really compelling vision. Often leaders can get lost in the technical aspect, but the tech is not the end game – the experience it delivers is.”

Personalisation: Making CDPs a key priority for investment

As mentioned earlier, putting your customer at the center of the experience is critical for ongoing success. Mounting research suggests that companies that adopt a customer-centric approach tend to outperform their competitors in areas like revenue generation and market share.

Unsurprisingly, research shows that while leaders are beginning to pare back investments in MarTech overall, however, investment in CDPs is accelerating. In fact, the study demonstrates that 40 per cent of brands say that CDPs are a key priority for investment – double that of last year.

“2023 is clearly the year of the CDP. Over the past three years, we have been tracking investment in MarTech and priority areas for the year ahead. With demonstrable growth in the number of platforms available and the providers serving the industry, it is fair to say organisations are still trying to make sense of the complexity of what is out there and what is the right choice for their brand,” Sperti shares.

“And while there are promises of improved efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and automation at scale – for many the returns are still too elusive as they grapple with how to integrate and embed platforms to derive value and to my earlier comments invest in training so people know how to use the systems most effectively. CDP uptake is being driven by gaps in the MarTech ecosystem, limiting teams to go after opportunities and work through key challenges.”

CDP benefits in focus

Data is the fuel source of modern business. However, the value of data hinges on its quality — unreliable and outdated data leads to unreliable and ineffective decision-making. It’s a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out” and no amount of marketing or financial investment can change that fundamental truth. That’s why a CDP like Amperity is so important.

A CDP acts as a unifying force for online and offline customer data. It takes data from every source inside your organisation, whether that’s point of sale, eCommerce, CRM (customer relationship management) web behaviour, etc and consolidates it, so you can understand who the humans are behind the data.

That gives you a comprehensive 360-degree view of your customers. This deep understanding empowers your business with valuable insights, from past purchases that can fuel personalised recommendations to informing decisions in various departments like IT for analytics or marketing for communications. It’s unified, unlocked data.

However, data unification is just the beginning. The true power of this unified data lies in its integration with downstream systems. Remember, it doesn’t matter what tools you have or implement if you don’t have a clean foundation of data to start with. Good data powers good marketing.

CDP: The indispensable business tool

It’s worth noting that while CDPs were initially conceived with marketing in mind, their functionality has expanded significantly. Their ability to collect, integrate and manage customer data from diverse sources makes them indispensable for multiple business departments. From sales to customer service and even product development, the insights derived from a CDP can drive strategic decisions across the board.

Some businesses even utilise CDPs like Amperity to calculate share prices. The reason is simple, a CDP should be the most trusted source of consumer data in your business.

Closing the skills gap

With change taking place so quickly, organisations must keep their teams up to speed. As such, upskilling must be a key priority. However, Sperti’s research reveals that a third (33%) of leaders felt their teams’ lack of capability and skills make driving change challenging when it comes to digital transformation.

She says, “Data and analytics once again topped the list of technical skill gaps within digital and marketing functions today – with nearly half (47%) of all participants, citing it as a key skill gap. What’s more, when we asked teams about the level of data literacy in their departments, only 35 per cent said it was strong. This means two-thirds of teams are operating without strong knowledge and skills in the data and analytics space.”

Sperti went on to say that little progress in closing the skill gaps in areas of data and analytics over the past three years has been made. “Trying to conceptualise and roll out strategies like a first-party data strategy is impossible if one, your team doesn’t have the capability to do so; two, your teams don’t know what good looks like; and three, if you are trying to build skills and capabilities whilst implementing change,” she explains.

What’s more, the study also demonstrates that while skills gaps abound in both technical and soft-skill areas, brands and organisations aren’t doing enough to address them. Almost half (43%) of leaders admit they have no training budget, which is undoubtedly holding their teams back.

A call to executives to future-proof your business

Executives must recognise that financial considerations are only one aspect of their role. Those who genuinely buy into the process of digital transformation are more likely to facilitate change effectively and communicate its benefits to their teams. Embracing these priorities and investing in the necessary resources, whether it’s data privacy compliance, personalisation tools or workforce development, is essential for guiding their organisations toward a successful and adaptive future.

This article is written by Billy Loizou, Area VP, APAC, Amperity.

The insight is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series under What’s NEXT 2023-2024. What’s NEXT 2023-2024 is a multi-platform industry initiative which features marketing and industry leaders in APAC sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year.

The digital marketing landscape is highly competitive and rapidly growing more challenging by the day. The deprecation of third-party cookies and increasingly strict privacy regulations have posed significant challenges for brands trying to make an impact in marketing. Now, brands are looking to first-party data to give them what third-party data never could — sustainable, robust and privacy-compliant results.

At the recent MARKETECH APAC’s What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific conference, Matt Hallett, Head of Product Solutions at Amperity, and Teresa Sperti, Founder and Director of Arktic Fox, led a panel discussion, addressing the challenges that marketers are facing in today’s landscape and how they can best navigate them. Here are their insights.

The challenges: Why your marketing isn’t measuring up

What’s holding APAC marketers back from making time for measurement despite the critical need for data-driven marketing? According to Sperti, it’s three things.

“Teams are stretched thin and lack the bandwidth to effectively invest the appropriate time and effort in measuring performance. They’re trying to balance short-term and long-term needs of the business. And trying to determine how to optimise performance or adapt strategy,” she says.

The second challenge tends to crop up when it’s time to actually measure. Sperti argues that when provided with mountains of data, marketers aren’t entirely sure what they should be measuring. “Marketers often lack clarity around deciphering the most appropriate measurement frameworks to utilise to demonstrate value,” she says.

“That’s largely because each channel, particularly from a digital point of view, provides a plethora of metrics to measure performance. It can be difficult to determine what the most important metrics are — this can create paralysis in marketers.”

The third challenge, Sperti points out, is the skills gap. In Arktic Fox’s recent research, noted in its annual Arktic Fox Digital and Marketing In Focus Report, half of leaders say customer data strategy and better utilisation of first-party data is a key priority. In fact, 59% say they are still trying to embed a more data-driven approach to marketing, and half of respondents (55%) say building a customer data strategy and better utilising first-party data is a top priority.

The rise of digital

At Amperity, Hallett shares that there’s a strong focus on helping brands unify customer data across disparate touchpoints. This empowers them to drive better experiences for customers at any time but especially during a time of change.

After working with a plethora of world-leading brands, he says the most successful amongst them have the right people at the top who understand measurement and why it is important. “Knowing what to measure ultimately starts with the people, strategy and the boldness to keep measurement as a number one priority,” he says.

With the rise of digital, measurement is especially critical, Sperti adds. “The rise of digital has created more complexity as much as it’s created more clarity from a measurement point of view because we have so much data at our fingertips now,” she says.

“Whilst the issues around measurement have intensified given the challenges of today, they’ve always been around. Historically, we haven’t been as accountable as we’ve needed to be around measurement and performance as an industry.”

Hallett agrees, saying, “Measurement issues aren’t a new problem. It’s just that tightening privacy regulations and cookie deprecation are adding more pressure to the space.”

Navigating a new privacy-first marketing landscape

Significant change is looming on the privacy regulatory front, and it appears that leveraging third-party cookies may no longer be an option after this year. Despite these shifts, in the Arktic Fox Digital and Marketing In Focus Report, when asked about the key priorities leaders have in the data and analytics space across the next 12–18 months, less than one in four (23%) suggested that a focus on improving their compliance with data privacy was a priority.

Meanwhile, less than half (41%) of brands indicate they have their house in order when it comes to privacy and consent, suggesting many brands will be caught off-guard by the magnitude of change that will bear down on the industry. Concerningly, only 11% of businesses from the study say they have a ‘clear plan and path’ they are implementing when it comes to evolving and adapting to changes in privacy and consent.

This finding suggests that leaders may not fully grasp the extent of the changes that will occur and the urgency of preparing for them.

With Australia tightening its privacy laws, Sperti says it’s imperative for brands to rethink how they are going to leverage that data and discover what, if any, gaps they have in their data sets.

“Marketers are going to need to adapt their measurement approaches accordingly to ensure they have a reliable data set from which to form and make decisions,” she points out. “It’s going to be a challenging transition off the back of our current market skills gap for those that are trying to build maturity and capability around data, to then have to tackle these really big challenges around measurement brought on by privacy and third-party cookie deprecation.”

Hallett agrees completely, but also admits that there’s a silver lining to all of this change — it’s making an even stronger case for a robust first-party data strategy. With third-party cookie deprecation, brands are trying to leverage first-party data in new and exciting ways,” he says.

“My day in and day out is essentially spent helping customers build the connectors to make sure that first-party data can be leveraged in a secure, safe privacy-compliant way.”

Embrace imperfection to drive marketing results

As businesses continue to navigate the dynamic digital marketing landscape, the pressure to deliver results has only intensified. In a world where success is often measured in clicks, likes and views, it’s essential to understand the different types of metrics that exist and how to use them effectively.

The best way to do this, Hallett says, is to maintain a culture of fast iteration and celebrate failure as much as success. “Because this is a period of such intense change, you have to forget your pride and be willing to walk away from a campaign if it isn’t working,” he says.

“Brands are feeling the pressure. Customers can go to a different brand or a different retailer with the click of a button. Everyone is feeling the pressures of Amazon. To thrive, it’s important to make sure that you’re out there, testing and learning as quickly as possible.”

Sperti agrees, saying the celebration of failure is vital. At the same time, she says, it’s just as important to start being comfortable with imperfection. “Decades back, marketers would work on a big TV ad, and they’d be really focused on driving that big, broad awareness – the kind that requires a lot of precision and perfection,” she says.

“Today, we need to start getting really comfortable knowing that our measurement frameworks aren’t perfect from the get-go. Often perfectionism stops us. We won’t start measuring until we have the ‘Rolls Royce’ of performance measurement frameworks, which means we never start. And when we never start, we fail to learn and evolve from a marketing point of view. What we don’t optimise, we don’t improve.”

Today’s opportunity is paved in first-party data

Ultimately, this new digital landscape demands a new journey — one organisations and brands must navigate together to find their footing as the foundation built upon shady privacy practices and third-party cookies begins to crumble away.

In a privacy-first world, all roads lead to first-party data. And it’s time for brands to run, not walk, towards getting their house in order. Brands who make the change to leveraging first-party data see net-positive outcomes not just in match rates, efficiencies, time and security but also in revenue.

The brands that say these challenges are tomorrow’s problems are missing out on the opportunity available to them today.

Australia – Even amidst cookie deprecation continually hanging over brands’ heads, organisations have shifted their priorities, with the focus moving away from the long-endured preparation for stricter data collection. According to a study by marketing advisory Arktic Fox, companies are now eyeing growth more than ever showing how the recent economic challenges have put considerable dent in their business trajectories.

The Australia-focused study showed that growth agenda is one of the top priorities for 78% of Australia-based digital and marketing leaders and their teams in the year ahead. Only 55% cited developing first-party data strategy as their number one goal.

Moreover, growth goals also trump brand development and embedding brand purpose (54%) in the hierarchy of company objectives. This is specifically for organisations in the market generating in excess of $100m in revenues.

Growth has moved to top the priority list since last year, showing the reality of present economic conditions, said the report.

When it comes to challenges, the current research showed that balancing short- and long-term priorities is the main struggle of two-thirds of respondents, demonstrating the balancing act leaders are facing to deliver short-term performance outcomes whilst building for the future.

Further to Australian leaders’ predicaments, some 60% of respondents struggle with resourcing and budget constraints, showing that current times are asking marketing and digital heads to be more laser-focused on priority areas and investing for impact.

On the key objective of incorporating digital transformation across the business, Teresa Sperti, Arktic Fox’s director, said, “Today we still see far too many leaders believing that digital is someone’s role as opposed to digital capability needing to be embedded across the organisation to become central to the business strategy and operations.”

“When a separate digital or ecommerce function exists that is siloed from the rest of the business, it sends a message that understanding digital is not my job or responsibility and stifles teams’ ability to build capability and develop skills,” she added.

The report was developed together with executive search firm Six Degrees and sponsored by martech Amperity. All in all, the 2023 Digital & Marketing In Focus study interviewed 230 marketing, digital, and e-commerce leaders across Australia within the period of November 2022 to February 2023.

Sydney, Australia – Organisations have been found to be underinvesting in training and development of data and analytics amongst their employees, as a new research by Arktic Fox and Michael Page Australia unveils that 40% of Australian leaders admit to skill gap in data and analytics endeavours.

The research also unveiled that 57% of those who see brand development and brand purpose in their top 3 priorities do not have full ownership over leading the CX agenda. Meanwhile, 55% of marketing leaders don’t feel they and their teams have a strong understanding and knowledge of Australian privacy principles.

In addition, the research also said that 88% of leaders don’t have a clear path forward to deal with the depreciation of third party cookies. Despite that, 34% of leaders agree that data literacy is strong within their marketing department.

Teresa Sperti, founder and director of Arktic Fox says organisations need to rethink their training and development investment and strategy. She added that the study shows that teams are investing at levels that aren’t adequate based on the current operating environment.

“A good learning and development program isn’t just about training, it is about leveraging an array of learning modes and providing learning opportunities for team members to bolster their skills and experience, across both soft and technical skill areas,” she said.

Sperti added, “Investment at the appropriate level is important if you are looking to re-skill and re-tool your team in line with the changing market. Whilst on-the-job learning has always been seen as the best approach, the cost of not complementing this with other forms of learning and development can be significant. As a result, businesses forgo revenue and value due to team members not being equipped with the skills to deliver on key outcomes.”

Meanwhile, Laura Houlston, director at Michael Page Australia says that the ability to influence stakeholders is vital to driving growth within organisations.

“Driving CX, transformation and growth all require marketers to influence up and across the organisation. As marketers’ remits expand and we are expected to play a bigger leadership role, the ability to manage up and across the organisation and influence becomes critical – but leaders are telling us that it is these soft skills where the biggest skill gaps exist,” she said.