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After surviving the massive disruption brought on by the pandemic last year, marketers are dusting themselves off, assessing what they’ve learned about buying behaviors, and embracing the new digital reality. This year, they’re ready to take action and move the brand forward.

Nearly 70% of marketers expect to boost spend in 2021, according to our new survey, Getting It Done in 2021. Many are growing their investments in MarTech aimed at leveraging customer data insights, executing campaigns more effectively, optimizing the customer journey, and improving operations and performance.

Marketers are also prioritizing working more closely with lines of business to lower costs, increase efficiency and just do a better job of both globalized and localized campaigns. It’s all part of eight strategic themes we at the CMO Council see for 2021:

<<Download our latest report, “Getting It Done in 2021”>>

1. MarTech: Migration, Integration, Optimization

MarTech spending is on the rise. Marketers will be busy evaluating and deploying new tools and e-commerce systems that optimize the customer journey, path to purchase and revenue.

2. The Customer Intuitive Enterprise

It’s time to model the customer-intuitive enterprise. This means creating an organizationally and functionally aligned culture and operational mindset around customer satisfaction and value creation.

3. Routes to Revenue

Mapping new routes to revenue requires marketers to architect growth strategies and plans that generate greater returns from products, programs, pricing, markets, partnerships and customer relationships.

4. Smarter Data

Marketers should be driving AI-powered insights and analytics that impact product ideation, customer relationships and business performance. Brand in’s-relation happens through smarter data exploration.

5. Advancing Marketing Leadership

Marketers should be advancing the marketing leadership agenda: the new mission and mandate of the CMO in an age of marketing transformation, operational excellence and innovation.

6. An Omnichannel Experience

Marketers should be seeking new ways to humanize, individualize and scale on-demand customer engagement through adaptive digital interaction.

7. From Decision to Precision

This is about bringing precision to every marketing spend decision. Marketers should be analyzing and modeling the marketing mix for greater attribution, compliance and performance measurement.

8. Multicultural Consumerism

Marketers may have to realign the brand purpose to reflect the age of multicultural consumerism. More than ever, marketers must deal with diversity, ethics, privacy and a racially and ethnically blended global market.

It’s going to be a busy year for marketers.