Data, a customer focus, and mobile technology are changing the roles of marketing leaders, but before they can impact business results, employees need to be properly trained and ready to collaborate. Planning for the future is a chief responsibility of marketing leadership, albeit a difficult one, and it all starts with internal collaboration.

In our latest research report, The State of Marketing Leadership, we surveyed marketing leaders to see how they collaborate, enable, and prepare for the future. Below are our some of our findings.

The State of Marketing Leadership

How Senior-Level Marketers are Redefining Success and Integrating the Customer Journey
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Marketing Leaders and Cross-Functional Collaboration

We asked marketing leaders which internal stakeholder relationships they view as most key to marketing success, discovering that the relationship with head of sales is most frequently seen as absolutely critical or very important.

Data integration isn’t possible without collaboration, and we see at least a 7% increase in the frequency of weekly collaboration among marketers who view the relationship with their peers as either absolutely critical or very important. This also translates into more effective relationships between teams, as shown in the following chart.

Fifty-six percent of senior-level marketers view their relationship with the CIO (or other tech team leaders) as absolutely critical or very important. As improvements in marketing continue to require improvements in technology, that relationship—whether strong or weak—will deeply affect the success of the overall customer journey.

Senior-level marketers told us they feel unprepared for increasing demands on data and analytics expertise. In fact, 46% reported an increased need for data and analytics expertise over the past 12+ months, while 43% expect to see an increased need over the next 12+ months.

These marketers are also feeling unprepared to gain a deeper understanding of marketing technologies and best practices — while simultaneously owning increased alignment of internal functions (e.g., marketing, product, sales, operations).

Training the Team of the Future

We asked marketers how they’re planning for the future. See popular terms in this word cloud:

“Train,” as in the need to better train employees, emerges as the biggest term in the word cloud. Here’s what marketing leaders had to say about how they’re preparing for the future of their role and their customers:

• “We’re training existing team members to perform new functions and hiring new staff when necessary.”
  – Director, mid-sized B2C
• “Working with training team to get trained up on new technologies.”
  – Director, enterprise B2B
• “We are spending a lot of time in research. We are reading magazines, whitepapers, articles, books, etc., to make sure that we are best equipped for the changes. In addition, we have scheduled to attend several conferences, some in person, some online, to find out more information. Finally, we are spending time with mentors to help us prepare and learn the most that we can.”
  – Owner, small B2B
• “We are trying to get smarter about the constantly changing landscape of our customer. Finding those unique and relevant touchpoints that make sense for the customer and ourselves, but keeping a close focus on the next to non-existent budget.”
  – Vice president, enterprise B2C

It’s clear that marketing leaders know they must keep pace with evolving technologies and best practices — thus the need to train and hire new talent. But along with hiring for new skills, improving internal enablement and collaboration should also play a role. Otherwise, marketing will be fully staffed with employees who know the latest technologies, but who don’t have the necessary support from non-marketing teammates who can aid in data integration and technology support.

For more data and insights from our latest survey of more than 900 senior-level marketers, download the full report — The State of Marketing Leadership. This latest report was a joint research report with LinkedIn and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.