LONDON: Marketers worldwide believe that 65% of their marketing spend had no discernible effect on consumers in 2007.

They also opine that this marketing wastage is at its highest in more developed economies, such as the US, UK, the EU and Australia, as opposed to newer tigers like China and India.
 
The Global Marketing Effectiveness Report surveyed 3,000 marketing professionals across the globe, questioning them on a range of issues such as the efficacy of different marketing tools and the pressures and concerns they experienced in 2007.
 
The responses suggest that their efforts reached an all-time low in perceived effectiveness – mainly for lack of accurate feedback. 
 
The latter commodity, by fortunate coincidence,  is  the stock-in-trade of the report's publisher, London-headquartered Fournaise Marketing Group, self-styled as "one of the world's leading marketing effectiveness tracking companies." 
 
Fournaise tracks both offline and online marketing effectiveness, capturing millions of pieces of data every week using wTAMs, a proprietary system that utilises advanced web, analytics and telephony-based technologies.
 
The report's findings reveal (deep breath now)  …

  • 65% of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers.
  • Estimated wastage rates varied from 45% for business-to-business marketers, through to 65% for business-to-consumer.
  • Just one in ten of respondents have automated systems in place to track the effectiveness of their spend.  
  • Of the 55% of marketers who do track the results of their spending, 80% do so manually, spending hours capturing, compiling and analysing data.
  • Questioned on strategy, 70% of marketers believe that short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns are more important than long-term intangible brand building (15%). A clear indication that  marketers are under pressure more than ever before to generate results.
  • Tracking marketing effectiveness topped the 2008 wish lists of 35% of marketers, and made the top three for 70%.

Says Fournaise ceo Jerome Fontaine: "Media clutter, sophisticated consumers and intense competition go some way to explain the wastage.
 
"But tracking every marketing dollar spent would mitigate the effect and feed critical real time analysis back into marketing strategies.

"Which in turn would have more positive impacts on the business bottom line.”

Data sourced from multiple origins; additional content by WARC staff