Are Marketers Becoming Digital Dinosaurs?

According to a CMO Council study of more than 200 marketing executives, covered by MediaWeek, marketers are being left behind by the digital age.

The report stated that 90% of companies do not have an integrated digital marketing strategy. And more than a third admitted that their marketing plans were nothing more than a combination of tactics.

Despite this, 20% of the marketing leaders reported having the approval from the C-Suite to make digital a reality in their organization, while 42% claim to have the interest and support of their teams. 23% are trying to figure out where digital fits within their existing strategy and just under 20% reported needing to address this as a strategic priority with management.

These kind of sobering stats led me to ask the question: are marketers becoming digital dinosaurs? Is there a correlation between the low number of marketers who are digital and the low number of marketers who do digital?

Earlier this year I asked if there's a leadership gap in B2B Marketing. I stated that the future of marketing was digital because the future is already here. I wonder if marketing leaders stopped talking or trying to address the digital skills gap because they are unable to change, because they fear the repercussions or because they don't understand digital themselves!

What percentage of the marketers that you know can actually run a paid search program without blowing the budget too fast? Or who can optimize a website? Or who can write a blog post?

Late last year I highlighted a chart from Mary Meeker's Web 2.0 presentation that showed in real numbers, the gap in advertising spend vs. consumer time spent on the 2 biggest digital channels, the internet and on mobile devices.

In 2011, she talked about a $20 Billion gap in the US alone:

Recently, Mary updated her slides for the D10 conference and showed the same $20 Billion gap:

The good news: the gap in the 'internet' channel has been reduced by almost a third. So maybe we are not dinosaurs after all! However, the gap in mobile advertising is getting bigger. So we have some catching up to do still.

There may be some more hope for us in these numbers from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), that show that mobile advertising is growing at 149% and search advertising is growing at 27%.

But growth in ad spending according to the IAB and the gap in ad spending vs. time spent as depicted by Mary Meeker is not really the point.

The point is in being where your customers are. The point is to create content that your audience wants, in all the places where they may look for it. The point is to have your customers share your content with their connections. The point is to lower the cost of sales and to increase the effectiveness of marketing.

So follow this great advice from Marketing agency Level 343 and imagine:

• Imagine your website ranks first for high-volume search terms
• Imagine your content is shared on social networks
• Imagine your site is completely mobile friendly
• Imagine your e-newsletter has an open rate well above industry standards
• Imagine you have a content creation engine inside your company that produces videos that routinely go viral
• And imagine 'your brand is on all of it.'