In today's hyperconnected world, marketers face increasing responsibility and pressure. Indeed, Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2016-2017 revealed that marketing budgets had climbed to 12% of company revenue. As a result, marketers now face greater accountability for campaigns. Meanwhile, more technology, more lines of business reporting to marketing, and more data has also increased the pressure in marketing.
The state of marketing
In order to stay ahead, marketers now have a new set of questions to answer with greater urgency. A whitepaper from Datorama found that there are five main questions that marketing teams must consider.
First of all, marketers need to find out which campaigns are working and where they should spend their next dollar. They must also consider whether their marketing spend and delivery are on pace, whether the right audiences are receiving the right marketing, and whether they are creating a great customer experience.
In the whitepaper, Datorama examined these five questions through the lens of Marketing Performance Optimisation (MPO). In effect, the data-driven approach provides the information marketers require to answer these questions at every level of the organisation.
Embracing data and analytics
For most companies, MPO begins with consolidating and organising online and offline advertising and marketing activity. This includes the integration and harmonisation of all spend and performance data across all channels and geographic regions. As a result, this produces actionable insights and data visualisation for data-driven decision making. Better management and centralisation leads to higher efficiency, so more organisations are now moving from a report-focused model of a MPO to a "proactive, insight-based model of marketing performance optimisation." Overall, it is evident that MPO is the answer to marketing's key questions — from performance and pacing, to audience and customer experience. As a result, modern marketers are now embracing data and analytics in order to address these crucial questions. Although budgets and more data is creating pressure for marketers, being able to understand performance and optimisation opportunities means that these teams now also require innovative technology. In order to keep up with the "siloed yet evolving world of marketing data," however, this technology must go beyond connecting data to unifying it. It must also deliver more than static reports in favour of visualisations that come equipped with incredible insights. As Datorama insists, "data-driven marketing is the outcome, and marketing performance optimisation is the road to get there."
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