Mi3 launches FY2025 Marketing & Customer Benchmarks - 105 companies, $3bn in marketing spend: Three-speed marketing emerges; customer KPI’s surge, c-suite cred rises, what next for agencies and AI’s early use cases

Mi3 Audio Edition

A deep, senior marketer study and report by Mi3, The Australian Marketing Institute (AMI), Qualtrics and Tumbleturn finds hard evidence across 105 top marketers responsible for $3bn-plus of budgets of an emergent three-speed marketing economy and upended KPIs and priorities.

There are big question marks in key sectors such as retail around the effectiveness of personalisation efforts: Just 15 per cent think their CX is performing, though telcos are confident they’re smashing it. There’s also a major swing to performance media as CMOs seek instant results. The good news is that after decades of being perceived as the colouring-in department, 83 per cent of marketers say that has now shifted, with boards and CEOs perceiving marketing as a critical growth driver – though B2B marketers are far less certain.

Problem is, marketer remits are exploding and the FY 25 Marketing & Customer Benchmarks report, polling top marketers across all B2C and B2B sectors, finds the majority feeling ill-equipped to tackle what’s rapidly coming at them. Plus they now have heightened responsibility for customer – with customer lifetime value or CLV eclipsing all other KPIs across the sample as a future indicator – thrust upon them.

But CMOs, customer chiefs and marketing directors across the piste are trying to offload duties to free-up bandwidth. Getting lead agencies to manage the partner roster – with an average of 10 agencies per brand across the survey – alongside consolidation is a rising trend, as is hybrid in-housing. Large brands meanwhile forecast project work will eclipse retainer arrangements, with even small brands suggesting it will be at least half of their requirements.

Then there’s the question of AI and just how marketers are using it. Content creation and productivity – which comes with positive and negative connotations for headcount – top the pile.

AMI’s Bronwyn Heys, Tumbleturn’s Jen Davidson, Qualtrics’ Ivana Sekanic and Akcelo’s Aden Hepburn unpack the findings and implications for marketers, agencies and the broader supply chain heading into FY25 and beyond. Download the report – here – to accompany the nuanced expert view.

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