The marketing function is essential and investing in new technologies is required for marketing teams to stay competitive.

That’s just some of what the 650-plus marketers surveyed for the inaugural American Marketers Survey, conducted by the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA) and BrandSpark in conjunction with Dapresy, revealed.

The results show that 83 percent of respondents agree that marketing is becoming increasingly important. That same percentage also said they need to adopt new marketing technologies—or they will face competitive obsolescence. Because of this, about 50 percent of respondents said they planned to implement marketing technology software in the coming year.

“Respondents believe that marketing is more important than ever before, and adopting new technologies effectively is a must to stay competitive,” Lukas Pospichal, managing director of GreenBook and NYAMA, said in a statement. “Mobile marketing was selected as the trend that will have the biggest impact on marketing in the next 12 months (and 10 years), though only 41 percent have a mobile strategy in place; another 30 percent are planning to implement within the next year.”

The consumer trends that respondents believed will have the greatest impact on their industry in the next 10 years were mobile, the emergence of millennials, advanced marketing analytics, demand for personalization, and increased focus on convenience. Millennials are driving the increasing demand for personalization, according to the study.

To respond to these trends, 54 percent of respondents said they were forming strategic partnerships, 52 percent said they were critically reviewing their core competencies, and 51 percent said they were increasing their technology capacity.

When it comes to marketing channels, results showed the five-most-used were customer relationship management/email marketing (84 percent), social network advertising (77 percent), online video (69 percent), online display (67 percent), and paid search (61 percent).

However, the most-used channels do not align precisely with those respondents perceived as generating the greatest ROI. While CRM/email marketing tops this list as well (at 31 percent), it was followed by paid search (19 percent), social network advertising (17 percent), online video (13 percent), and online display (12 percent).

In addition, respondents were asked where they’ll spend their money moving into 2017. Half of those surveyed say they expect to spend more money on online video. That was followed closely by social network advertising (49 percent), while only 36 percent said increased dollars would go toward mobile advertising.

They also shared what they won’t be putting their money toward: Sixty-three percent do not expect to spend any money on radio, and 59 percent do not expect to spend anything on print newspapers.

Full results of the study are available here.

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