Our aggregated customer data is in and we’ve analysed the top line trends and key takeaways that marketers can glean from our learnings in Q2 2024.
To get to the bottom of what’s become pertinent to marketers this quarter, as well as challenges to be aware of, we chatted to Mutinex Co-founder and Global CEO, Henry Innis, as well as Head of Marketing Science, Will Marks, and Director of Client Services, Jonathan Fox.
Let’s dive in.
Marketing spend continues to remain flat
The flat trend of marketing spend continues. We’ve seen marketing spend across the board essentially remain static since around 2021. This, fortunately bucked the expectations we had back in 2021 and beyond that budgets were about to be slashed.
If you analyse the indexed data you’ll see that while fluctuations certainly exist, the overall trend is flat.
So what does that imply? What this lack of budget growth means is that marketers need to learn to do more with less.
You’ll likely need to be lean and savvy with your spend, and increasingly smart about how you stategise, and which channels you choose to pursue.
What are the opportunities in a climate of high interest rates?
Amid a high interest rate dominated economic climate, there’s a few industry truths that can be ascertained and a few strategies you can deploy to target those with folding cash. As Jonathan Fox tells us,
“In terms of industries doing well in this environment, the best things to think about are which consumers have money right now. It’s typically those with paid mortgages – typically older demographics. People with savings have really benefited, with up to 5% interest on savings at the moment. Those with mortgages? Not so much.”
“So those appealing to older demographics, like travel, fashion, and automotive, will do better than those targeting younger demographics. Those businesses in brick and mortar are also doing it tough, with higher rents and lower foot traffic.”
Will Marks noted that there’s also a lot of opportunity in this environment for the switched on marketer to capture new customers who are shopping around. As Will puts it,
“This kind of environment creates a lot of noise, disruption, and churn. This means people are looking to perhaps move providers, whether that’s insurance, energy, or phone plans etc.”
“With that comes opportunity for marketers and advertisers to try and capture that market and direct that demand towards themselves. This is possible when people are being price competitive. Businesses that are positioning themselves well and putting up the right offering can really do well here.”
“I often see this across all industries, even when you expect them to be struggling, there can be a lot of winners here if they position themselves as best as possible.”
So, while your industry may be either hamstrung or buoyed by your particular audience, an adaptive marketer can still capitalise on customer churn and the associated increased opportunity to capture new eyeballs and customers.
It might be time to go fishing.
What’s happening across the board in terms of marketing ROI?
We all know how fundamental ROI is to any marketer, and certainly, every company’s sales professionals. Your ability to justify spend and point to wins becomes essential.
So, what did we find?
The flatline extends
Essentially, we again see a reasonably flat return on investment across our indexed customer data. But as Henry Innis notes,
“The expectation for marketers by businesses is that ROI will increase constantly. But the reality is that a flat result at the moment is a good result.”
Your campaign launch might be too early
Interestingly, in peak periods of spend we actually saw a drop in ROI, such as during holiday periods.
One reason for this was launching campaigns too early for, say, Christmas. We discovered that many brands were perhaps premature in anticipating event dates in their marketing campaigns and that this should be reviewed.
If you flight a campaign many weeks before a calendar event, you may have faded from memory by the time the date lands. Adjust course as you see necessary.
A lot of product investment and not enough brand investment
Another interesting factor we discovered was that companies are clearly trending toward product investment over brand investment. The data was quite clear in this leaning.
What that means is that brand awareness will gradually be eroded if that imbalance continues, negatively impacting ROI.
As Henry explained on this point,
“I think the harsh reality is that marketer’s budgets will be cut or have been cut and that many may not be able to be an ‘always on’ brand marketer. But if you’ve got brand marketing ROI it’s the time to defend that. But when you go into that brand space at the moment, which is experiencing less demand, you’re going to get more bang for your buck.”
What’s really driving revenue right now?
Ah yes, the burning question – what’s driving revenue in the marketing mix? Our indexed data gives us a few noteworthy insights in this regard.
Funnily enough, there’s been scant movement in the ‘screen wars’ of late, even as a clear desertion of linear TV continues pace. The same holds true for search – spinning a tale of plodding steadiness.
What’s really dropped off is OOH or ‘out of home’ advertising, which had seen a bounce back post-COVID, but is now receding again.
Now for the headline, we’ve seen a real boost in affiliate marketing. In fact affiliate marketing has doubled its revenue contribution since Q3 2022. Savvy marketers take note…
Download the full Marketing ROI Report and check out the webinar
To grab the results in full, simply Download the full Q2 2024 Marketing ROI Report for free.
Better yet, you can devour the entire webinar below for every possible angle of analysis…
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