eMarketers still struggling

Aug/03/2008 08:38

According to a report from Forrester 60% of eMarketing people strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that they “struggle to build a case for interactive marketing within their companies”. 60% !? This, to me, is a clear indication that a lot of marketing people don’t understand the Web and instead are relying on outdated business models that are irrelevant in todays consumer empowered economy.

When I viewed this presentation from Forrester I was amazed that 60% of eMarketing people are struggling to build cases for interactive marketing today. I then spent some time on the phone with some colleges to ask for their input within pharma and medical device interactive marketing and heard that they thought this number was low and within pharma could be as high as 80-90%. “I spend 75% of my time trying to justify dollars for the Web” said one. “We spent $250K on search last year and even though we can clearly show the results towards driving new Rx’s I was told to cut that budget in half so that we could afford to do some more print ads” she continued.

Another person told me that whenever their ad agency comes in that they are always trying to get more money for TV even though they are aware that other programs need to be cut in order to continue to do TV. “I spent an hour and half showing that our interactive marketing was having a measurable positive ROI but our agency just wanted to talk about TV and awareness”. As he went on he said that in fact his interactive budget had been cut so that they could do a new campaign for his product.

Why is this happening I wondered and posed this question to my peers. “It’s agency against agency here” said one, “my digital agency is separate from my ad agency and they seem to be fighting among each other to see who can get dollars”. “It’s also relationships”, said another. “Our agency person is in bed big time with our Director and they have become close friends so I don’t think he can be impartial when it comes to telling them he has to give them less work”.

This seems to be happening all over. One company just spent over $2 million completely redoing their Website only to be told now that management is questioning all branding dollars, including those spent on the Website.

Now don’t get me wrong there is always a place for TV for new products but the traditional reach and frequency method to allocate dollars is dead. While a lot of marketers are using You Tube for branding others are overlooking the Web because they don’t understand how to measure its impact.

Will it change anytime soon? When I asked this question there was a long pause and then the answer I knew was coming “I don’t think so, it’s just too much a battle to get money for anything anymore and the Web is just a place for us to put posters”. Too bad

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