The CMO’s guide to building data-driven consumer connections

The right insights are fun­da­men­tal to build­ing water­tight mar­ket­ing strate­gies. More than ever, organ­i­sa­tions are oper­at­ing with a data-down approach to devel­op long-term loy­al­ty, advo­ca­cy and engage­ment. To secure their seat at the top table, CMOs need to acquire new tools and mar­ket insights both strate­gi­cal­ly and organ­i­cal­ly.

How­ev­er, mar­keters are at risk of becom­ing inun­dat­ed with infor­ma­tion. As the vol­ume and com­plex­i­ty of the data that they must respond to snow­balls, CMOs are strug­gling to iden­ti­fy reli­able insights and trans­late them into deci­sions. A 2022 report by GfK and CMO Coun­cil revealed that 91% of mar­keters acknowl­edge the impor­tance of respond­ing to insights at speed in their role, but 55% only have slight or mod­er­ate con­fi­dence in their data ana­lyt­ics and insights.

In the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, com­pa­nies should be har­ness­ing high-veloc­i­ty data mar­ket­ing, not shy­ing away from it – and mak­ing sure their com­pa­nies sup­port the effort. “Mar­ket­ing bud­gets are going to be scru­ti­nised in the year ahead, so being able to demon­strate the val­ue of mar­ket­ing data and the deci­sions it informs is essen­tial,” says Jut­ta Langer, vice pres­i­dent of con­sult­ing at GfK.

The accel­er­at­ed pace of mod­ern busi­ness leaves lit­tle room for sec­ond-guess­ing, and CMOs need to show their strength as data-dri­ven lead­ers. To exceed con­sumer expec­ta­tions, brands need to be sure that their data is high­ly rel­e­vant and opti­mised for quick deci­sion-mak­ing. Langer con­tin­ues: “If you don’t have the right data insights, you will find it hard to deliv­er a con­sis­tent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and you’re more like­ly to miss out on oppor­tu­ni­ties because you don’t see the sig­nals.” So how can CMOs ensure that they have the right time­ly data and solu­tions?

The first step is mak­ing data leg­i­ble and avail­able. Stor­ing data for easy access can also be incred­i­bly com­pli­cat­ed, and com­pa­nies are falling into the trap of pulling this infor­ma­tion into silos that can’t talk to each oth­er — a strat­e­gy that may be work­ing now, but will not be fit for pur­pose in future as the load con­tin­ues to increase. With many CMOs at a loss, GfK is see­ing ris­ing demand for its gfk­con­sult ser­vice. “We plough through the data and insights 24/7 and have a huge team of ana­lyt­ics experts who can give clients the con­fi­dence to build sound strate­gic plans and sup­port their exe­cu­tion,” says Langer.

Action­able data lays the foun­da­tion for future-proof mar­ket­ing strate­gies that can cope with the demands of mod­ern con­sumers. First, busi­ness­es need to be more selec­tive about their insight sources to make high-veloc­i­ty data mar­ket­ing sus­tain­able. “What organ­i­sa­tions need is just a hand­ful of rel­e­vant data sources, plus tech to help democ­ra­tise and visu­alise it, and then skilled peo­ple who can inter­pret it and con­vert it to real-world actions,” observes Gon­za­lo Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va, GfK’s chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer.

Accord­ing to Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va, opti­mis­ing the speed at which data can be analysed and insights shared should be a top pri­or­i­ty for CMOs. “When I’m look­ing at cus­tomer and mar­ket data and plan­ning strat­e­gy, I want to know which cam­paigns and pro­mo­tions are per­form­ing best and should be repli­cat­ed — and where we need to stop invest­ments right away,” he says. “If you want to real­ly cap­i­talise on time­ly oppor­tu­ni­ties or hedge risks, this exer­cise needs to hap­pen every week. Oth­er­wise, you’re leav­ing mon­ey on the table.” Near­ly a quar­ter of top data mar­ket­ing per­form­ers claimed to have real-time access to cus­tomer insights, com­pared to just 2% of the low­est per­form­ers. Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va believes that ‘always on’ data ana­lyt­ics are key to dri­ving the best val­ue from mar­ket­ing insights and achiev­ing sus­tain­able brand growth – essen­tial for CMOs seek­ing a stronger voice in the C‑suite.

Cap­tur­ing up-to-the-minute intel­li­gence from the busi­ness, its con­sumers, and its com­peti­tors is achiev­able through exter­nal tools such as gfknewron. Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va explains: “When you have data that shows the true sales uplift of your pro­mo­tions for Black Fri­day and oth­er peak sea­sons, you can opti­mise mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and future pro­mo­tions to dri­ve sus­tain­able growth and brand pre­mi­um.”

To respond to insights at scale and pace, ease of use needs to be a pri­or­i­ty. Organ­i­sa­tions should be putting acces­si­ble struc­tures in place that enable mar­ket­ing teams to make tac­ti­cal deci­sions quick­ly. But many can’t afford the lux­u­ry of wait­ing to build those sys­tems inter­nal­ly.

Time is of the essence, and Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va urges oth­er CMOs to be bold­er in data strat­e­gy. “If you spot the right oppor­tu­ni­ty using data from a plat­form like gfknewron, you’ve paid for your tech­nol­o­gy costs for the next three years,” he says. CMOs who let their data do the work are bet­ter pre­pared to man­age future dis­rup­tions, min­imise loss­es, and tap into con­sumer pur­chas­ing habits to lev­el up their strate­gies and hold that seat at the exec­u­tive table.

Three data mistakes CMOs should avoid

To help put chief mar­keters on the right path with data, Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va cit­ed sev­er­al crit­i­cal mis­takes that can pre­vent CMOs from climb­ing the high-veloc­i­ty data mar­ket­ing curve.

Fre­quen­cy is key

One pit­fall that CMOs can fall into is not look­ing at data often enough. Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va cites the exam­ple of wash­ing machines and fridges. “We don’t buy them very often – but if your fridge breaks and you need a new one, you’ll have a new one with­in 48 hours,” he says. “As a brand, if your mes­sag­ing was off that week, then you’ve missed that oppor­tu­ni­ty and left mon­ey on
the table.”

When it comes to data, curate aggres­sive­ly

The sec­ond con­cern is that CMOs are try­ing to process too much data. “You might have 100 or 200 poten­tial data sources, but in real­i­ty, per­haps four of them mat­ter,” Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va con­tin­ues. Rather than try­ing to pull in more data, com­pa­nies should redi­rect their focus to iden­ti­fy­ing the most impor­tant mar­ket insights and estab­lish sys­tems that will make that data easy to visu­alise and under­stand.

Democ­ra­tis­ing data breaks down bar­ri­ers

A major road­block for many CMOs is that data is not being democ­ra­tised. “If you have the right peo­ple and the right part­ners, you can democ­ra­tise that data more quick­ly,” CMOs should look to remove bar­ri­ers to data shar­ing and deci­sion-mak­ing in some areas, Gar­cia Vil­lanue­va adds: “I don’t wait for the mar­ket research team to show me data when I’m mak­ing deci­sions. I’m going to look at leads, see which cam­paigns are work­ing best, and then make choic­es on what I need to repli­cate, or change.”

With these watch-outs in mind, CMOs can lever­age care­ful­ly select­ed data and tools to keep secur­ing loy­al cus­tomers – and con­firm their own roles as future-focused lead­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tors.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it gfk.com/cmo

Pro­mot­ed by GfK