Having true organizational alignment in marketing is extremely rare – yet, not having it leads to a plethora of problems…top-to-bottom.
As the CEO of Opal – a marketing platform trusted by Target, Starbucks, and many other legendary brands – speaking with marketing leaders to learn more about their challenges around organizational alignment is part of the job.
However, I also wanted objective data, too. That’s why Opal commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 151 CMOs, VPs, and Senior Directors of Marketing from the technology and retail sectors.
Download the full research right here!
This data shows that you are far from the only marketer experiencing these challenges – they are common and pressing problems.
- Alignment Challenges are Common
- Stat: Only 1% of respondents say their organization’s content planning and execution strategies are seamless.
- However, Alignment is Recognized as Critical – Especially for Content
- Stat: 89% of marketing leaders say that connecting planning, creating, and calendaring is necessary for content to succeed.
- Organizational Silos are Noted as a Major Problem
- Stat: 77% of marketers said that organizational silos make aligning on strategy difficult.
- The Pitfalls of Misalignment are Worse Than Just People Working Late
- Stat: 50% of marketers said customer experience, marketing channels, and touchpoints cannot be aligned into a cohesive strategy.
- Stat: 42% of marketers said their organization has lost the ability to effectively collaborate and gather feedback.
- Leadership is Willing to Invest to Achieve Alignment
- Stat: 87% of marketers say their organizations need better hardware/software to achieve desired alignment.
- Leaders Want a Software Solution – These are the Capabilities They Believe It Should Include:
- Stats:
- 88% want connected functionality for content planning, creating, and calendaring.
- 85% want visualization capabilities for planning and previewing content.
- 85% want omnichannel content publishing and distribution.
- 84% want visualization capabilities for organization-wide marketing campaigns.
- 83% want AI capabilities.
- 82% want content reviews and feedback.
- 82% want customizable workflows.
- Stats:
Watch the webinar Forrester and I hosted about this data.
Built for Alignment
So, what did that never-before-seen Forrester research, and me waiting in the Portland rain 11 years ago, have in common?
They both proved that marketing organizations require better alignment to truly succeed.
Let me explain.
11 years ago, I was a new dad. As you can imagine, my time to catch up with friends was seriously limited. A few friends worked in marketing for a major Portland brand and on our rare free nights when we finally had a chance to hang out, – something always got in the way…
It was always a variation of the same problem. Their marketing strategies and campaigns were nearly there – they just needed to spend the rest of the evening refining them, responding to feedback, getting approvals, keeping leadership in the loop, etc…
These were some of the most clever and creative people I’d ever known, and yet they (and their leadership) were spending so much time just getting aligned on ‘the plan’.
It wasn’t until I was brought in to help operationalize some of this back and forth that I began to feel the pain myself. This sparked an obsession with creating a better way for marketing organizations to work, leading to the formation of Opal: our 10-year love letter to creating a better way to work in marketing