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It’s that time of the year where many teams are considering how effective their approach for 2024 has been, and beginning to set strategies, budgets, and tactical plans for 2025. To help, we’re pleased to share results from our survey, Marketing in Scholarly Publishing.
We asked contacts within the academic and scholarly publishing sector with at least partial marketing responsibility to share their priorities and thoughts on changing practices within marketing.
Our survey explores key trends including evaluation and measurement; technology and tools; the explosion of channels; and opportunities from AI.
Who did we hear from?
In total, 70 marketers took part in the survey, ranging from Company Directors through to Marketing Executives and Assistants. They reflected a myriad of organisations from across our sector, from the larger commercial publishers to university presses, scholarly societies, and technology partners. Most respondents represented smaller marketing teams, of five people or less.
What are the biggest challenges facing marketers in 2024?
Data analytics and measurement was hands down the biggest challenge that marketers raised. Of second priority was innovation and the adoption of new technologies. We’ll explore measurement and technology feedback in a further article later this month. Although there were other challenges noted in our results, these all scored comparatively lower (mentioned by approximately 7% of respondents): open access, investment and budget allocation, diversifying channels, and skills development.
We also asked about objectives: the top objectives that teams were supporting included brand building, sales and submissions. Of all objectives, increasing submissions was identified as highest priority by respondents.
Budgets for marketing are…
Most likely to increase a little, very few considered there would be a significant increase or decrease to their budget. Our survey showed that marketers are planning to invest more in data and insights, technology and infrastructure.
How are channels changing?
The mix of channels that teams are employing for marketing continues to be diverse. Marketers highlighted that multimedia organic content (e.g. video), organic content marketing (written), and video advertising were on the rise, while print, organic social, conferences, paid social media and display ads were all going down in importance. We’ll look at this further in a follow up post.
How are teams evolving?
It isn’t surprising to see teams start to evolve skill sets to reflect the challenges and priorities identified in the survey. The top three skills marketers are prioritising for skills development are analytics, marketing automation, and customer relationship management. Teams are addressing skills gaps through in-house training, attending industry conferences and workshops, or by hiring new talent.
This skims the surface of our findings. If you’d like to receive a full copy of the results, please complete the form below. A password to access the report will appear below the contact form when you click send.
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