Marketing industry is growing and developing all over the world, but everywhere the process has some unique characteristics. In this article you will learn about European marketing ecosystem, its trends, challenges and needs. We will also tell you how our solution can be useful to marketers.

In May 2020 Boston Consulting Group published a report after surveying C-suite marketing managers in the UK, Germany and France. Here we will discuss what problems marketers in Europe face today and how they deal with them. Digital transformation has brought significant changes into the marketing industry, making technology and tools more complex and sophisticated to match the arising needs. To cope with the innovations and grow, 97% of European marketers turn to external partners in such areas as technology, measurement, media planning and buying, etc. Experienced agencies and consultants provide companies access to cutting edge technology and help them to increase ROMI. 

Due to fragmentation of European market one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work here, so campaigns have to be adapted to local cultures and languages. For the same reason countries progress at different pace and have different levels of digital maturity; the UK, for example, is ahead of all Europe in terms of it.

Tough data policies, namely GDPR as well as local regulations, complicate marketers’ work. And with a recently introduced restriction on third-party cookie sharing from two major digital platforms, Apple and Google, their hands are even more tied.

Companies, especially smaller ones or those not located in big cities, struggle to attract digital marketing talent.

Unlike to the US, test and learn culture is not very close to Europe; and in another report BCG experts cited experimenting as a crucial element of progress and development. So it’s necessary to embrace any results even negative and learn from them.

Agile marketing, which would help companies faster develop campaigns and more effectively work with partners, is not easily adopted in Europe.

Another obstacle European marketers face on the way to achieving their target ROI is attribution, cross-channel measurement and management. AdoptoMedia offers a tool that could help them solve the measurement problems. This advanced MMM platform covers both online and offline media and complies with GDPR.

According to the BCG survey, 60-80% of marketers still use agencies. With our platform you can organize more effective work with agencies on planning, executing and financial closure of marketing campaigns.

European marketing industry is going through an automation phase, and numerous solutions are actively introduced and implemented in many companies. We also offer a platform for automating routine marketing operations, that can be smoothly integrated with BI-systems and exiting company IT infrastructure without undermining workflow. It will increase your marketing efficiency, save time and money.

Even though digital advertising is taking over the world and dominates the UK market, in Germany and France traditional media still account for the majority of spends. However traditional media owners realize the importance and opportunities of the digital world and start to expand in that direction.

Marketers are actively using tools for building in-house capabilities. Before adopting this strategy analyze its advantages and disadvantages, and with the right approach to in-housing, you can make it work and benefit your company. With the growing number of options it’s easy to get confused. An important factor to consider before in-housing or outsourcing a marketing activity is your ability and need to scale it to other countries. 

Top-marketers recommend

• in-house only what you need and can do well: the best approach is to combine in-housing with outsourcing, like Nestlé did. But finding the right balance is complicated by market fragmentation in Europe. With our solution you can build an in-house agency, increase accountability and transparency of media buying processes and manage invoicing.
• build internal data capabilities: data-driven marketing is necessary today if you want to grow, so companies are investing in it. It helps to better understand, measure and forecast ROMI. In our system data is stored in structured databases, that’s why it can be easily analysed. With every ingestion of new data ROMI models are updated automatically. 
• external partners should understand your business well: to benefit you most. an external partner needs to know as much as possible about your business. We have solid experience of working with finance, telecom, real estate, pharma , e-com, insurance, FMCG, retail, B2B companies, and can quickly adjust our solution to meet your needs. In the following case studies you can see how we modelled a bank’s media mix and automated media planning in a telecom company. 
• transparency, collaboration, and data sharing with real-time access and compliance: our platform provides all that. We guarantee transparency of your marketing operations and visibility to C-suite executives. With our platform it’s easy to plan, approve and execute advertising campaigns, communicating with agencies and publishers. You can set different access levels in the system by region or position, so that everyone would see only relevant information and reports.
• use unified, concrete metrics: consistent KPIs are crucial for success. You should agree on KPIs that are aligned with the overall company goal, relevant and understandable to everybody, not just marketers. By doing so you will improve collaboration between company departments and solve some challenges that prevent effective dialogue between CMOs and CFOs.
• ensure compliance: today data is a source of power and advantage, but it could also cause troubles if you break privacy policies. We use only aggregated data at a daily level for MMM models, so we comply with privacy regulations.

AdoptoMedia offers an advanced marketing automation tool that can be easily integrated with the company’s IT infrastructure and different BI systems. With our platform you can evaluate ROI of each channel in your mediamix, automatically allocate budget and easily manage advertising campaigns from planning to invoicing. Try our solution to achieve a high level of marketing accountability and increase ROMI.