Effective collaboration guarantees great results. Take our partnership with Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, for example. Our joint report, The State of Marketing Collaboration, offers data-driven strategies for optimizing how marketers work together.
As a think tank producing cutting-edge research redefining the future of work, the Work Innovation Lab was the perfect partner for us in exploring this topic. Both Meltwater and the Work Innovation Lab help marketers move beyond data gathering to uncover actionable insights.
Our analysis of survey results from 830 marketing professionals combined with Meltwater’s impressive social listening capabilities were a powerful one-two punch. The strategies we uncovered help marketing leaders better understand how to leverage strategic collaboration to drive results.
In this blog, we’ll dive into five data points from the report, sourced from our social listening and analytics solution. Plus, we’ll show you the process behind how we arrived at each insight. For a full analysis of how marketers collaborate, along with strategies for optimizing the process, download the fullThe State of Marketing Collaboration report.
The global conversation
In concert with the experts at the Work Innovation Lab who surveyed more than 800 marketing professionals, we at Meltwater used our social listening and analytics solution to examine how the world discusses marketing collaboration online. To start, we wanted to get a sense of the overall conversation around marketing and collaboration. To do so, we created a complex Boolean query composed of more than five dozen keywords and phrases signaling relevant discussions, like mentions of “marketing” or “public relations” near mentions of “collaborate” or “working together”. The results gave us a bird’s-eye view of what the world has to say on the subject.
Data point: Online conversations about marketing and collaboration have increased by 41% year-over-year (YoY)
Our analysis found that from April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024, conversations about marketing and collaboration across X, Reddit, blogs, podcasts, forums, Pinterest, WeChat, Facebook, Instagram, and comments grew by 41% YoY. This notable increase in conversation supported our suspicions that the topic of collaboration should be top of mind for marketing leaders.
Zeroing in on marketers
With insight into the overall conversation on hand, we aimed to zero in on the internet users we wanted to hear from most: marketers themselves. To do so, we narrowed down our analysis sources to three social media platforms — Reddit, X, and Pinterest — where we could easily focus on mentions from self-identified marketers. We used the “bio” Boolean operator to search for mentions of “marketing” or “marketer” in Pinterest and X profile bios. Plus we used the “source” operator to analyze discussions in Reddit communities where marketers gather to talk shop. These included r/Marketing, r/advertising, r/SocialMediaMarketing, and more, with a collective membership of more than 3.29 million Redditors. With our self-identified marketers isolated, we then searched for relevant terms and keywords around goal-setting, cross-functional collaboration, and AI.
Data point: Discussions about goals and goal-setting have surged by 318% YoY
The impressive increase in mentions of goals and goal-setting highlights just how crucial they are in the dynamic world of marketing. This stat gives important context to the Work Innovation Lab’s finding that only 39% of marketers are confident that their department’s goals align with overall business objectives. These and other insights from the report informed our strategic recommendation that prioritizing communication about goals can help teams collaborate more effectively.
Data point: Marketers mention sales teams more frequently than any other team
To learn more about how marketers collaborate across functions, we examined mentions of non-marketing departments including customer service, IT, research & development, and more. Our analysis found that sales is mentioned much more frequently than any other department, underscoring just how relevant it is to marketing teams. This makes sense considering how marketing and sales rely on one another to achieve overall business goals. However, this stat shows that there is much room for marketers to consider other teams more, like R&D and customer service. For example, the data marketers use to understand consumer perspectives can be invaluable to teams working on improving products and customer-facing services.
Data point: Mentions of research & development (R&D) had the highest positive sentiment among cross-functional teams.
Though sales was discussed most, our analysis found that R&D was discussed most favorably, with the highest proportion of positive mentions. One possible reason? R&D teams are made up of subject matter experts with insights and knowledge that can make for informative, engaging marketing content. One Redditor even posed this question to fellow content marketers: How can I incentivize R&D members to blog for marketing?
Data point: Mentions of AI and collaboration skyrocketed by 606% YoY, with 57% positive sentiment.
The sentiment of discussions about AI and collaboration is vastly more positive than negative. Some posts with this rosy outlook, such as this one, expressed excitement about the potential of AI as a tool for marketers rather than a replacement for marketers.
Intrigued? The data points we covered here are just some of the many insights included in The State of Marketing Collaboration. Check out the full data-driven report produced in partnership with Asana’s Work Innovation Lab for more on how marketers can overcome some of the biggest roadblocks to strategic collaboration.
