The following article from Advertising Age says that consumers wish to do more business online, but that companies may not be adequately meeting him/her there. Ad Age included a survey that companies can take to measure their communication preparedness. I'm including it with this post.
MARKETERS FAILING INTERACTIVE PART OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING Forrester Study: Consumers Want Cross-Channel Engagement, but Companies Are Falling Behind
Published: April 03, 2011 Attention, marketers: You're falling behind your consumers.
A "huge disconnect" between consumer behavior and marketer behavior persists -- thanks largely to CMOs who have not empowered their interactive marketing teams to deliver the consumer experience, consistent across channels, that people expect these days.
That's the message of a Forrester Research report, "The Future of Interactive Marketing," out today, and explained by Principal Analyst and Research Director Emily Riley. Consumers, Ms. Riley said, "expect the information about them to carry across a mobile, hand-held, call center, website -- and that very rarely actually happens. They think that you, as a marketer, should know everything about them and be one step ahead of them in terms of addressing their interests and needs."
But marketers still lack adequate skills, resources and technology to meet that expectation, she said.
The report found that 30% of large companies have fewer than 15 interactive-staff members. That's a constraint that limits the interactive team's ability to use anything other than digital media in executing campaigns. And teams are still, more often than not, siloed in marketing organizations, separate from disciplines such as creative and production. In fact, Ms. Riley's research leads her to believe that less than a quarter of Fortune 500 companies have effectively integrated interactive marketing teams.
The report's findings raise imperatives for CMOs in structuring their marketing organizations to deliver on the future of interactive marketing -- defined by Forrester not as building online campaigns, but "enabling collaborative customer relationships -- through any medium or experience.