Digital commerce surge puts new pressures on CMOs | WARC | The Feed

Digital commerce surge puts new pressures on CMOs

While a majority of marketing leaders believe digital commerce will be the most important route to market for their organisations in the next two years, a survey by research and insight company Gartner also reveals they may struggle to meet the new expectations of senior leaders as a result of the pandemic.

Why it matters

A customer shift to online shopping during the pandemic has skewed figures over the past 18 months and set a new, high bar for digital commerce. Nine in ten surveyed leaders agreed that they need to evolve current digital business capabilities to produce more tangible results in 2022, no easy task at a time when budgets are being cut (to 6.4% of company revenue in 2021 from 11% in 2020).

They will need to develop a roadmap to digital commerce maturity (a key driver of digital commerce performance), to establish a strategy that can deliver sustainable short and long-term growth, and ensure they retain their top digital commerce talent.

Key findings 

• Despite the pace of change and disruption, 79% of organisations met or outperformed their 2021 revenue targets.
• Only 27% of senior leaders’ expectations were exceeded in terms of outperforming peers with regards to digital commerce revenue and profitability. 
• Only 11% of marketing leaders reported both exceeding revenue and profit targets, and exceeding the expectations of their senior leadership.

Gartner surveyed over 400 marketing leaders in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK during August and September 2021 for its report: CMO Digital Commerce Survey 2021: Big Growth Creates Bigger Expectations.