Marketers in Mideast, Africa lack confidence in their data, analytics, insights

Globally marketing sector has witnessed rapid changes especially post-pandemic as digital or online shopping spiked. This has posed as a constant challenge for marketers to come up with smart sale strategy.

Fast change in consumer behaviour has certainly led to mixed signals from the data captured to study the same and chief marketing officers (CMOs) have entered a new era of high-velocity data marketing to spot sudden disruptions in market and customer behaviour.

Effective data would mean speed of acquiring real-time, relevant data signals. Speed of generating data insights. Speed of closing the gap between data and insights, insights and action.

Yet two-thirds of marketing leaders are only moderately confident (or worse) in their data, analytics and insights systems. This means a big opportunity lies ahead for CMOs who have the wherewithal to climb the high-velocity data marketing maturity curve.

A study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council, in partnership with GfK, takes a close look at high-velocity data marketing capabilities and how to achieve them. The study examined what marketers are planning over the next 12 months, what hurdles lie in the way, what capabilities gaps exist between top and bottom performers, what are the regional differences.

The findings are based on a survey of over 300 marketing leaders across industries and geographies. Companies such as Capital Group, Vodafone, Hitachi, Al Safi Danone, Kyndryl, Fisher Funds, Nesnah Ventures, NCCI, Blue Buffalo, and Dolmen Group contributed to the study.

Key findings indicate that only 2 in 5 marketers are very confident in their data systems to win and retain customers. What’s holding them back? Systems that connect data silos; talent to move from data collection to action; complex digital footprint

And while 96 per cent of marketers say direct access to customer data is critical to gain competitive advantage, only 3 per cent of marketers say customer data is highly accessible.

Top barriers to data access are insufficient technology; data control lies elsewhere and lack of data process. Only 1 in 4 marketers say they can move quickly from data gathering to actionable insights.

"The CMOs need to take on the mantle of a purpose-driven evangelist — using data to help meet the desires of consumers who insist that their brands need to be as human as they are. By bringing the art of intuition and creativity to the science of data — at the speed of today’s decision-making — CMOs can and should become catalysts for healthier, more compassionate brands that deliver sustainable growth,” said Gonzalo Garcia Villanueva, CMO of GfK.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries.

The CMO Council's 16,000-plus members control approximately $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide.

“CMOs around the world has entered a new era of high-velocity data marketing,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

“Many need to get better at extracting relevant data signals across channels, generating actionable insights, making insights available in real-time, and going deeper and more granular with customer insights," concluded May. — sandhya@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai