Member Article

Confidence is coming back

Andrew Harvey, chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, sees a surge in confidence in the economic outlook.

Just like the improved good weather of recent weeks, it is such a joy to be able to again report improved confidence and optimism towards both the UK economy as a whole, and individual organisations’ performance for the next 12 months.

This is the third quarter in a row that we have recorded such an increase in confidence, up 10 points since January.

It’s not all rosy however. There are still substantial concerns over access to capital and a negative rhetoric hampering growth, but companies are putting a difficult first quarter of 2013 behind them and looking ahead to the next three months.

Again, we found that SMEs, those micro or small business so important for the North East’s recovery, were in a more optimistic mood than their larger counterparts, continuing the trend we uncovered previously.

These trends come from the third wave of results from the Marketing Confidence Monitor, a quarterly study run by The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and supported by Deloitte, which regularly surveys 1,750 UK marketing professionals

Also, almost one-third (29 per cent) of those questioned in the study expect economic conditions in the UK to improve slightly or significantly, while almost half of respondents (41 per cent) said that they are more confident in their business’ ability to meet its financial and growth targets.

Any wholesale or sustainable recovery in UK economic performance will rely on businesses putting the customer back at the heart of their decisions, and committing to invest in new ideas, opportunities and ways of working – that’s where marketing plays a crucial role, helping to mitigate risk and build competitive advantage. It is therefore vital that these early signs of optimism and opportunity are shared within the boardroom and reflected in an appetite for longer-term investments and decisions.

The role of marketing is becoming increasingly cross-functional and cross-channel, bringing the organisation together as the custodian of consistent customer experience to deliver business goals. Addressing this new role of marketing will be critical for the profession to sustain this new wave of optimism.

This is the time of year when a new group of university graduates look to enter the workforce and I would urge all companies, large and small, to look to see if they have adequate marketing skills to take advantage of the business opportunities this Marketing Monitor suggests.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chartered Institute of Marketing .