Infograph: digital budget limitations remain major concern

Hong Kong marketers’ confidence in the value of digital marketing continues to grow but budget limitations remain a major concern, the new APAC Digital Directions Report and an infographic from Adobe and CMO Council shows.According to the report, Hong Kong marketers rated their own digital proficiency as average (39%), citing constrained budgets being the biggest obstacle to their ability to implement meaningful digital strategies to improve business performance.This was slightly higher than the regional average (36%), where 22% and nearly 5% of APAC marketers rated their proficiency levels as good or very good respectively.Working with marketing teams to determine mix and budgets (72%) is the main factor that decides budgets for digital marketing investments. About 33% of Hong Kong marketers expect to spend less than 10% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing.Yew Hwee Ng, general manager of Adobe Greater China, said 74% of respondents have increased their digital marketing budget allocation."This suggests Hong Kong marketers generally have confidence in digital marketing," said Ng.The report suggests that strengthening digital marketing content strategy (70%), social media optimisation, including boosting community growth, engagement and content (51%) and richer, deeper customer profiling and insights are top priorities specific to digital marketing in the next 12 months.“Leading a digital transformation for your business is a complex and challenging task, but the rewards are great. Early adopters have now consolidated their position as leaders and are able to prove value to their organisations and industries, creating a virtuous cycle of funding and resources," said Paul Robson, president at Adobe Asia Pacific."Those companies use customer intelligence in an insightful way, are leading with data; measuring, predicting and using insights across multiple channels to raise the bar by creating new experiences to satisfy customers."Liz Miller, senior vice president of marketing at CMO Council, added that respondents from the report are confirming that digital enables additional touchpoints with customers (66%), delivers more cost-effective customer acquisition (47%), improves customer loyalty (41%) and improves the overall customer experience and responsiveness (33%)."The challenge now is to turn our attention to extracting greater value and insights from data to provide ideas and knowledge that improve product, services and customer engagement and provide the foundations for a stronger internal pitch to boost investment and resourcing," she said.The report reveals findings based on data collected from 648 respondents in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and India.More than half of the companies surveyed were head-quartered in Asia Pacific (56%), and 57% of respondents worked in organisations with turnover of US$1.1 billion or greater. Respondents came from industry sectors including IT, retail, banking and travel and hospitality sectors among others.