Marketers live in a data-driven world. The better the data, the better decisions they can make on programs that drive revenue and build loyalty and retention. But the truth is, there is still a struggle in marketing to bridge the silos of their first-party data so they can stop relying on third-party data to create better customer experiences.
In the Wunderkind The CMO State of the Union report, B2C CMOs say first-party data is having the least impact on revenue:
This is a B2C study, but if we looked at B2B marketing, we'd also see a struggle to bring together first-party data and a reliance on third-party data that doesn't entirely make sense unless the bulk of your marketing strategy is advertising-based.
More proof of the data challenge. The 2022 Outlook in Data and Technology from Anteraid found that two-thirds of marketers don't have a comprehensive data strategy to inform marketing. And this:
The marketing tech stack can get pretty big - especially considering the number of technologiesavailable. But this idea that we can't connect data across systems is getting old. Just about every marketing and sales Technology connects with Salesforce and often HubSpot, which are the primary tool in marketing sales.
In the Anteraid report, 61% of marketers have a CRM (customer relationship management system), and 35% have a marketing automation (MA) platform (HubSpot fulfills both these needs for mid to smaller companies). The Anteraid report is based on mid-market companies; you can expect that enterprise companies would show an even higher percentage of these platforms.
It's true that not every technology in the marketing stack is easily integrated with others, but many do come with either out-of-the-box connectors or toolkits that include open APIs to build connections. Even if you took a chance on a smaller, younger technology with no connectors, there are tools out there that help you build connections (like Zapier). Of course, this requires open APIs, but what technology today doesn't provide an API?
Marketers also need to step back and scrutinize their tech stacks. Too often, too many technologies in the stack aren't necessarily providing value. In addition, in the drive to try the latest strategy or tactic, marketers are adding technologies to their stacks faster than their marketing operations team can integrate them (if they integrate them at all). The chart below shows how complex the stack is getting for many companies.
The first step is to understand what are the foundational technologies in your stack and make sure those are integrated and data flows between them properly. Some companies bring in a CDP (customer data platform) to help here as the central repository for all data flowing between applications. But even if you don't have a CDP, you can ensure your foundational tech is integrated.
Then for additional technologies, your ops team needs to bring them into the stack in a way that brings the data together.
Whether B2B or B2C, reliance on third-party data is confusing when this first-party data is sitting in systems, screaming to be used. For PLG companies, data is pure gold.
