Print and Digital Marketing Challenges for Retailers

The retail industry is in the midst of a revolution. Customer purchasing behavior is fundamentally changing due to the collision of the physical and virtual worlds. Experian found that 36 percent of U.S. organizations interact with customers and prospects across five or more channels. Despite this new reality, consumers want an integrated shopping experience and expect retailers to deliver. Failure puts retailers at the risk of becoming irrelevant, according to Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2013.

In April, Affinity Express commissioned industry research to better understand the challenges and goals of retailers because we serve this segment with our advertising production solutions. Our investigation included a series of in-depth interviews and a written survey with more than 80 respondents across a range of retail categories such as grocery, home improvement and sporting goods stores.

Respondents

The functions we targeted were print advertising, marketing, creative services and production services. In terms of level, 43 percent of the respondents were vice presidents or directors, 35 percent were manager level, 4 percent were CMOs and the rest fell into the "other" or C-level category. Thirty-eight percent of these contacts are given an advertising/marketing budget, 32 percent manage the budget, 11 percent set the budget and 10 percent influence it.

Budgets

For 64 percent of the retailers, print circulars and digital advertising are not part of the same marketing budget. The budget for print circulars is managed by the vice president of advertising 45% of the time and the director of advertising 22 percent. The vice president of marketing is responsible 20 percent of the time and the director of marketing 9 percent. When it comes to the digital advertising budget, it is managed by the vice president of digital marketing (31 percent) and the director of digital marketing (30 percent). The vice president of marketing is accountable for the digital ad budget in 19 percent of cases and the director of marketing 7 percent. The vice president of advertising and the director of advertising are responsible in 4 percent and 2 percent of the cases, respectively. With print and digital in separate budget silos and under different management, it is likely workflow is inefficient, assets are not being shared and costs are high, as 60% digital ads are being produced by outside ad agencies.