A recent Gartner study reveals primary steps that marketing leaders should be considering while managing marketing innovation investments in 2021.
In a rush towards digital transformation plans across businesses, like ‘agility,’ the word ‘innovation’ has become omnipresent amid modern-age enterprises. However, there is a significant discrepancy about what innovation could actually mean.
According to a recent Gartner study, chief marketing officers (CMOs) see innovation as the route to faster revenue growth and success. Today, marketing innovation is making up more than 20% of overall marketing budgets, according to the annual Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2021.
In fact, it has been found that almost 72% of CMOs have increased their marketing innovation investments over the past year. Gartner surveyed more than 400 CMOs and marketing leaders from the UK, North America, France, and Germany – from the period of March 2021 to May 2021.
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The marketing researchers tracked the critical areas of marketers that are investing in and where cuts are being made from users, programs, and technologies. However, business leaders have increased investment around marketing innovation; nearly 91% struggle to measure its impact.
Besides, almost 83% of marketers indicated that innovation has not delivered up to the management’s expectations in their organizations. This is primarily because many marketing teams still lack a clear definition and shared knowledge of what marketing innovation implies.
In this context, Ewan McIntyre, co-chief of research and vice president analyst at Gartner Marketing practice explains – “This isn’t just arguing semantics – definitions matter when it comes to delivering on business objectives related to innovation.”
Basically, given the current market scenario, there is a massive price for getting innovation wrong. Ewan also added, “Misunderstanding what innovation means to your organization has consequences that impact the scope, intent, and outcome of activities.”
Furthermore, over 95% of CMOs said they now have a dedicated headcount for various innovation initiatives. Another 93% of the respondents agreed to the fact that their organization will fund high-risk initiatives even though there is a risk factor.
Certainly, as per the Gartner experts, innovation is simply the execution of new ideas and plans that could help to create long-term business value. And this will require three essential elements – novelty, execution, as well as a beneficial outcome.
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In order to ensure marketing innovation investments do not fail to the risk associated with various strategies, resources, or credibility, Gartner suggests CMOs need to consider the following approaches –
- Building a precise definition and sharing an understanding of marketing innovation. It will help companies to get rid of innovation programs of ambiguity – minimizing the hazard of innovation-in-name-only.
- Clarifying the enterprise’s appetite for ‘new’ by being clear about the distinction between ideas that are fresh to the world, fresh to the industry, as well as innovative to the organization.
- Educating the marketing professionals along with stakeholders on the dual modes of innovation, including transformation and optimization. It could be done by being transparent about the difference in return and potential risk.
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