CIM study reveals quiet confidence among marketers

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has released the autumn 2009 Marketing Trends Survey, which reveals that marketers continue to be quietly confident about the future UK economy.

The ninth wave of the Marketing Trends Survey, conducted by Ipsos Mori, shows that optimism has recovered strongly since the low point of last year's survey, and the first signs of optimism seen in the previous wave six months ago appear to have been consolidated.

This more positive outlook is backed up by the financial conditions of the companies surveyed, which have improved compared with the previous wave; sales performances are up, marketing spend is up and redundancies are going down.

However, these figures are far from where they were before the economic crisis, and it seems that the recession has left many companies weaker with recovery proving slow and difficult.

David Thorp, director of research and professional development at the CIM, said: '2010 will certainly be an interesting year for marketers, with the continuing uncertainty about an economic recovery, the UK general election and an ever-growing presence of digital and social media.

'It's good to see that marketers are responding to customer needs by changing their products and services.

'For now, marketers are wisely concentrating their spend in the most effective activities, and still see the need to invest in training.

'As we move into the New Year, I'm convinced this more professional approach will stand them in good stead when the economy fully recovers.

The survey reveals that after the low point in autumn 2008, when 70 per cent expected the economy to get worse versus 11 per cent who thought it would improve, sentiment has continued to brighten through spring and into autumn this year.

In spring 2009, the proportion expecting conditions to worsen halved to 34 per cent and now the latest wave of the Marketing Trends Survey sees 51 per cent expecting the economy to improve and 12 per cent expecting it to get worse in the next year.

There has also been a consolidation of positive sentiment among UK marketers about their own organisations' business prospects.

When asked whether they thought that business would improve or get worse over the next 12 months, 51 per cent say they expect it to improve against 16 per cent who expect business to get worse.

This improvement has been evident since the most difficult period, in autumn 2008, when nearly as many marketers (27 per cent) thought their own companies' prospects were declining as thought they were improving (29 per cent).

There appears to be a creeping recognition that organisations need to adapt in order to survive and prosper in the current environment.

Seventy-two per cent of marketers agree that there has been a fundamental shift in their customers' current behaviours and spending patterns since the start of the recession.

Fifty-three per cent of marketers say that the recession has forced their company to change its products and/or services - an increase on the proportion claiming this in spring 2009.

In addition, an increasing proportion are seeing potentially positive impacts of the economic downturn - 36 per cent now say that the recession is opening up lots of opportunities for their company.

This has risen from 28 per cent in spring 2009.

Twenty-one per cent of marketers think the best return on investment (ROI) is delivered by customer relationship management (CRM) activities.

CRM's ROI benefits are particularly noted among those working in financial services/other services firms (27 per cent).

Second highest overall for ROI, is online advertising (12 per cent) followed by e-mail and public relations (both 11 per cent).

Advertising - excluding online - is most widely seen as delivering the worst ROI - 22 per cent rate it as worst.

The second worst performer is sponsorship with 10 per cent of mentions.

CRM is used by 77 per cent of the marketers taking part in this survey and accounts for an average of 10 per cent of overall marketing spend.

Sixty-six per cent of those using CRM think their marketing function has a high level of visibility over their entire organisation's relevant customer data.

This proportion reaches 77 per cent in retail, distribution and leisure companies but drops to 59 per cent among public sector/charities.

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