A new analysis from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals that brands exhibiting more excellent digital maturity record more sales and cost efficiency than their less mature peers. In Portugal, an organization’s digital maturity is related to increases in productivity and salaries, and digital marketing should be one of the priority areas of development for companies in 2022.
These were part of the study’s main conclusions, “The fast track to digital marketing maturity,” which shows that the most mature brands in the area of Digital Marketing increased their sales, on average 18% above that seen for their less mature, more mature peers. 2% of what they had recorded in 2019. More mature companies also have better cost efficiency dynamics – on average, they improved their efficiency by 29% above less mature ones.
These companies also recorded superior performance in their respective market shares, with more than twice as many digitally mature brands increasing their share in the last year, on average, by 3% or more compared to low-maturity brands. Regarding typology and sectors, the Medium and Large Companies in the Telecommunications, Media, and IT/Technology sectors lead in global digital maturity in countercycle with heavy industries.
Furthermore, in the study “The Path to a Bionic Portugal: The Digital Maturity of the Business Fabric in Portugal,” BCG also found that the digitalization of companies is directly related to the productivity levels and average salaries of organizations. This relationship can be explained by the investment made by companies in more qualified human capital, which allows them to implement technological transformation with tremendous success.
The same study states that, despite companies showing intentions to use digital as a driver of their strategies, there is still some inertia in its application in some relevant areas, namely in support functions, operations, customer offerings, and approaches to new markets, resulting in structural digital gaps.
Although the solution involves accelerating the response and efforts to compensate for the delay, several obstacles may arise, such as the more significant the evolution in this field, the more demanding it becomes to reach the next level of maturity.
Regarding the solutions to be taken by companies to accelerate their maturity, the study identifies four specific accelerators: at a technical level, there is the construction of a virtuous cycle around the information held by the company itself – first-party data -from way to resolve privacy issues and maintain customer trust; and the development of an actual data measurement capability, which includes predictive models to replace information from third-party cookies throughout the chain (end-to-end) between channels. At an organizational level, establishing agile performance cycles based on a test and learning approach is highlighted, and, finally, the need to guarantee access to new skills and resources.
Companies that are at more advanced levels of digitalization have between 25% and 30% fewer gaps in these four accelerators than companies that are still in the initial phase of maturation and better business indicators than companies in the same phase of maturity but with less balance in the development of the four factors.
Factors
The factors that influence the maturity of digital marketing will evolve as new technologies appear on the market and competitors develop their capabilities further. Therefore, organizations must develop technical skills and organizational structures to follow the maturity curve; otherwise, they will become irrelevant to consumers”, argues Pedro Pereira, Managing Director and partner at BCG. Hence, many of them consider digital marketing to be a priority.
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