The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers. Part 2

Written by: Maxwell Iskiev

 (Part 1 you can see - https://cutt.ly/vwB8PU1G)

Top Marketing Challenges Ahead

6. Marketers turn to social media targeting and first-party data in response to Chrome's third-party cookie phaseout.

Increased data privacy regulations have been a hurdle for marketers over the past few years, from iOS changes to GDRP and Google’s plans to phase out third-party cookies. 

With 84% of consumers in our consumer trend survey saying data privacy is a human right, public opinion is definitely shifting towards more safeguards around personal data.

On the marketer side, 84% say data privacy changes affected their strategy in 2023. This year, key changes marketers expect to impact them most are:

• Google Chrome's third-party cookie phaseout (a concern of 47% of marketers
• Apple iOS Privacy Protection features (41%)
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation (40%)

The issue is marketers aren’t quite ready for this shift - 81% say their marketing activities rely on third-party cookies to some extent and around one in five marketers say they aren’t prepared to lose access to them.

Additionally, 76% of marketers say Google phasing out third-party cookies will make marketing more difficult. 

So what are marketers doing about it? 47% say their company is exploring alternatives to third-party cookies, with social media targeting and first-party data being the most popular solutions.

25% of marketers are exploring targeted social media ads, followed by collecting first-party data (25%), Google Topics API (21%), contextual advertising (15%), and universal identifiers (14%).

We’ll talk about the benefits of first-party data next, but to learn more about these alternatives, check out our blog post taking a deeper dive into each solution.

Personalized Marketing with First-Party Data & AI

Despite steps towards personalization and a lot of talk about focusing on the customer experience, we know there’s plenty of room for improvement. 

Our survey shows only 35% of marketers say customers get a very personalized experience with their brand and just 65% of consumers say the content they see from brands feels relatable. 

On top of that, most marketers lack crucial information about their audience, with only 65% saying they have high-quality data on their target demographic.

When we asked marketers what they know about their target audience, less than half know where they consume content, their demographic information, their interests and hobbies, products they are interested in, and insights on their shopping habits.

Why is this so important? Getting this data helps you create a truly personalized experience, which 96% of marketers say increases the likelihood of buyers becoming repeat customers, and 94% say personalization increases sales. 

To top it all off, marketers whose brands give customers a personalized experience are 215% more likely to say their marketing strategy this year was very effective compared to marketers at brands that don’t offer a personalized experience.

As we mentioned in the previous trend, data privacy regulations make personalization a little more difficult by reducing your access to data.

But that also presents a new opportunity with first-party data, which is data collected directly from your customers. Not only is it higher quality, but it’s also unique to your customers and your business, providing better insights and only getting more powerful with the addition of AI.

While we’ve all been using generative AI tools that leverage public information, the real magic happens when you combine AI with your own business data, allowing marketers to offer a highly relevant, personalized experience.

77% of marketers who use gen. AI say it helps them create more personalized content, personalize the experience customers get with their company (72%), improve the overall customer experience (71%), and understand their customers better (71%).

While the power of AI and first-party data is still yet to be seen, all signs point to this intersection being the key to a truly scalable personalized experience. 

And when it comes to making the most of your data, one key piece to the puzzle is having a single source of truth, so let’s go over some of the reasons having centralized and accessible data is make or break in 2024.  

7. Marketers still struggle with disconnected data, tools, and company siloes.

In last year's State of Marketing report, data-driven decision making was both a top tactic and a top challenge marketers were addressing.

And, while AI and other flashy trends might convince you otherwise, data is more important than ever in 2024. Still, marketing data, teams, and tools are disconnected. 

This makes sharing and getting necessary data challenging, prevents organizations from getting a holistic view of their data, and reduces data quality. We call this phenomenon a crisis of disconnection.

Around 1 in 4 marketers say it’s difficult to share data with other teams and get data they need from other teams at their company.

On top of that, 23% of marketers say the way marketing data is stored at their company is inaccessible and just 26% say their marketing data is fully integrated with the tools they use. Additionally, only 59% of marketers say the tools they use are interconnected. 

Our survey also found that marketers with connected tools, data, and teams performed significantly better in 2023. 

The Solution: A Single-Source of Truth

While 93% of marketers with a single source of truth for data say it is beneficial to their organization, only 65% of marketers actually tell us they have one. 

A single source of truth directly addresses the top challenges marketers see with sales and marketing alignment -  a lack of effective communication between teams, sales and marketing teams using different tools, and difficulty sharing data between teams are all key drawbacks. 

So what actually happens when sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned? Marketers say their budgets are wasted, sales and leads are lost, and customers end up getting a poor experience. And marketers who are aligned with their sales team are 26% more likely to say their marketing strategy this year was very effective compared to those who aren’t aligned. 

One highly effective way to implement a single source of truth is getting a CRM like HubSpot, which integrates data with tools and boosts alignment across teams. 

86% of marketers using a CRM say it’s effective at improving alignment between the teams and marketers with a single source of truth are 56% more likely to be strongly aligned with their sales team than those without one. 

Furthermore, 76% of marketers with a CRM say it is important to the success of their overall marketing strategy, and 57% say their CRM became more important in 2023.

Marketers who use a CRM are 128% more likely to say their marketing strategy this year was very effective compared to marketers who don’t use a CRM. And on top of that, 93% of marketers using HubSpot CRM say their marketing strategy was effective this year.

Lastly, AI is also very effective at improving connection, with marketers who use it saying it helps their organization share data more effectively (74%) and collaborate more effectively (73%).

What's Next in Marketing

When it comes to all the things shifting in today's landscape, the list above is just the tip of the iceberg.

For a detailed list of the top tactics, opportunities, challenges, channels, and content marketers will leverage in 2024, stay tuned for our State of Marketing Report -- which launches next week and will be linked to this page soon. 

https://blog.hubspot.com