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Digital-Marketing-Monitor Illustration mit Rakete

Digital Marketing Monitor 2020.

Merkle identified trends, strategies and challenges in digital marketing.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing offers countless opportunities to get in touch with customers and to market products.

This multitude of options and the search for suitable strategies, methods and experts can also be overwhelming. Especially when it comes to keeping pace with technological developments and new trends in digital marketing.

Merkle has investigated how companies from the DACH region are positioned in digital marketing. The Digital Marketing Monitor 2020 identifies corresponding trends, tendencies and challenges.

Get the complete study now (currently only available in German).

Central results of the study

According to our Digital Marketing Monitor, the main trends are Social Media Marketing, Big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

On average, companies spend a third of their marketing budget on online marketing. The majority of the companies surveyed would like more money to implement such measures internally. One fifth would like to spend more budget for external support. The number of agencies increases with the size of a company.

In general, digital marketing still lacks budget and expertise. Respondents find it difficult to collect and analyze customer data and distribute content across channels.

Social Media Marketing trends.

Social Media is establishing itself in the digital marketing mix: companies are increasingly relying on professional campaigns. These are based on strategies with validated targets and sustainable, data-driven methods. More than half of the companies create these in-house. Agencies are often in charge for the implementation. One third of the respondents have external campaigns planned, content created or monitoring and analytics carried out. Almost 90 percent of the companies surveyed use Facebook – regardless of company size and industry. Nearly half of the respondents use the business platform LinkedIn, which thus overtakes Xing. Just as many companies use Twitter. Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest play a minor role.

Content Marketing trends.

Illustration zum Digital-Marketing-Monitor 2020

Content Marketing is an important instrument in digital marketing companies focus on with their investment: in 2018 they spent eight billion euros on it. More than half of the respondents have already pursued Content Marketing with their own strategy. Approximately 75 percent of marketers create the content internally, and almost as many enter the content themselves. In Content Marketing, agencies tend to assume the role of strategic consultants. Only one third of marketers rate target group relevance and personalized content as success factors. They also attribute little influence to journalistic quality, SEO relevant editing and storytelling. In view of this misjudgement, it is hardly surprising that the majority find it difficult to arouse user interest with their own content.

Trends im Search Engine Marketing

If you want to position your company on the web, you need search engine marketing. SEO is particularly important for long-term and cost-efficient visibility. An optimized website also benefits trends such as voice search and artificial intelligence. According to the Digital Marketing Monitor, the majority adapts its website to SEO criteria. 40 percent complete all of the corresponding tasks in their own operations, and almost one third outsource them. For the same percentage Search Engine Optimization is too expensive and costly. One third says it takes too long for SEO to achieve visible results. Google is the preferred search engine for ad placement. Only a few companies concentrate on Search Engine Advertising (SEA). Classic text ads use 60 percent, 40 percent rely on display ads that appear on other websites.

Inhaltsverzeichnis des Digital-Marketing-Monitor 2020 — Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Contents of the study.

Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Contents of the study.

Digital-Marketing-Monitor 2020: Übersicht zu den Marketingaktivitäten — Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Overview of marketing activities.

Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Overview of marketing activities.

Digital-Marketing-Monitor 2020 Management Summary — Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Management Summary

Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor 2020: Management Summary

Kanika Kundra, Consultant Research & Insights and author of the study.

Namics Mitarbeiterin Kanika Kundra — Author of the study Kanika Kundra.

"The companies have recognized the numerous possibilities to get in touch with their target groups through digital marketing. Unfortunately, however, there are still too few who have a well thought-out strategy for it. Most companies are rather overwhelmed by the many options and trends. In order to avoid blind actionism and bad investments, marketing managers should focus on their corporate goals and customers. An external challenger can help by looking from the outside."

Study design

The Merkle Digital Marketing Monitor is based on two different surveys: qualitative interviews and quantitative questionnaires.

We interviewed 12 managers from companies of different sizes and in different industries in Germany and Switzerland to collect qualitative data. Our experts have derived hypotheses from this.

These were validated by a questionnaire with a panel of 200 marketing experts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Merkle evaluated the data obtained in this way and processed the results in the Digital Marketing Monitor 2020.