The data-driven CMO

Tangible benefits achieved as a result of data-driven marketing

The business atmosphere has gone through a rapid transformation over the past decade — technology is maturing every day, plethora of information is available from various sources and a new corporate mandate to create actionable insights from data, big and small, that drive value for brands and consumers alike—has changed the fundamentals of marketing and have propelled the marketer into a powerful new role as an agent for change.

The discipline of Marketing has increasingly become a data-driven approach.

Research has shown that marketing driven by data or insights has boosted higher returns on the investment by using the customer information in a way that gives businesses a competitive edge over their rivals.

So, what exactly is data driven marketing?

According to Gartner, “Data-driven marketing refers to acquiring, analyzing and applying information about customer and consumer wants, needs, context, behaviour and motivations “. The result is that it will help organisations to make time-bound decisions, which in turn leads to improved products and enhance customer experiences, along with higher operational efficiency and competitive advantage (the chart on the left depicts how businesses achieved tangible results with data-driven marketing in some of the areas).

In a research initiative, Global DMA report, 2014, represented by 3,000 thought leaders representing all segments of the advertising, marketing, media and technology industries across 17 global markets, a remarkable 80% of them reported that data is positively important to the deployment of their marketing and advertising efforts. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that nearly three-quarters (74%) of marketers (out of a total of 331 responses from senior executives in a Turn and Forbes collaboration survey in 2015) expect to increase their data marketing budgets this year.

In the study by Forbes, 2015, some important industry-wise insights revealed that:-

• The technology (39%), telecommunications (39%) and retail (37%) industry emerged as leaders in achieving an overall data-driven marketing. Though historically banking has been a consumer-focussed industry, it is lower in the rank. Energy industry is a laggard here with the least percentage points.
  

• In terms of utilisation of a data-driven marketing to better support and grow the customer base, the travel & hospitality, consumer packaged goods, retail, advertising/ marketing agencies were close competitors with high demonstrable gain attained in this area (figures below). 

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Competitive advantage attained in customer experiences through data-driven marketing- by industry group

To sum up, organizations that are “leaders” in data-driven marketing have these practices ingrained into the culture of their organizations, and are able to move swiftly between engagements with effective and highly efficient cross-functional collaboration. Thus, “leaders” also record far higher levels of customer engagement and market growth than their “laggard” counterparts.


Author:  Debaleena Debnath
Debaleena is a digital media consultant @ speradigital.
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