How Analytics Has Changed Marketing
Data is now an integral part of marketing. It is essential for developing your campaign creatively, knowing which channels to push them through, and for measuring. According to CMO Council Executive Director Donovan Neale-May, 42% of marketers have installed more than ten solutions across marketing, data, analytics or customer engagement technologies, over the course of the last five years, with 9% adopting more than 20.
Analytics tools are readily available and inexpensive. Yet while marketers can invest all the money they like in flash tools that pump out colourful reports, perhaps even with numbers exploding out of the screen and dancing on the desks, if no-one really understands what they’re doing with them, they may as well be grinding them up and using them to make paper mâché models of classic cars.
A new report from the CMO Council and RedPoint Global, has found that often, marketers are far less capable with their data than they might believe. The report notes that, ’While today’s omnichannel customers are more connected than ever before, organizations are failing to keep pace with customer expectations for frictionless experiences, despite the multitude of data, analytics and engagement systems in place.’ Their survey found that 7% of the marketers said they deliver real-time, data-driven engagements across both physical and digital touchpoints.
Simply put, many marketers do not know what data they have at their disposal, and they don’t know how to use it. Marketers in this new environment have to be great consumers and interpreters of data to enable them to make the right calls, and at the moment such practitioners appear to be few and far between. This is not an easy task, and will likely require investment in training and reskilling. Chief Marketing Officers also need to look at changing the make-up of their teams, and looking again at the fundamental criteria they want from prospective employees to put a greater onus on those who are highly numerate and technically minded – those with backgrounds in maths, engineering and sciences.
WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell once said ‘the future of advertising and marketing services belongs as much to Maths Men (and women) as it does to Mad Men.’ Companies need to realize how important data is for the success of their marketing campaigns and invest not just in the tools, but in the people equipped to analyze and use data.
