CMO Survey: Marketing Analytics

New growth in digital marketing expenditures

Many marketing leaders say they’re highly motivated to make significant levels of investments in marketing analytics. But the enthusiasm comes with some caveats-a shortage of trained professionals as well as a lack of tools to measure the impact on business performance are among the factors that could threaten to stunt their plans.

Responses from Deloitte’s most recent bi-annual CMO Survey conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business signal a healthy appetite for analytics: Over the next three years, spending on marketing analytics as a share of overall marketing budgets is forecasted to increase by more than 200 percent. At the same time, the interest and pace in digitization is also on the rise. The growth in digital marketing expenditures continues to outpace traditional advertising. Marketers intend to spend 12.3 percent more on digital advertising in the next 12 months, compared to a 1.2 percent decrease in spending on traditional advertising over the same period.

For decades, marketers have applied budgets to tactics such as quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to get insights on consumer behavior, improve advertising campaigns, and track brand health. Behavioral and point-of-sale data have been utilized to measure the marketing mix and pricing. More recently, many marketers have adopted digital-era tools such as social media listening and monitoring solutions, as well as demand planning tools, in order to forecast growth.

Too often, these approaches to improve marketing and sales performance can be disjointed, and increasingly, marketers say they don’t have the right tools to measure success. There are a number of ways organizations can enhance the application of marketing analytics investments to prepare for the future, however.

Foremost should be a focus on developing a unified commercial spending strategy that marries sophisticated marketing analytics with digital marketing activities. Consider how the consumer journey and the path to purchase have evolved over time as consumers browse, test, and shop through omnichannel methods. For instance, we are familiar with a consumer product goods retailer that tracks and measures the impact of digital marketing by linking individual purchases back to campaigns, regardless of whether those purchases were in-store or online. By using cross-channel attribution techniques, the retailer can better understand the impact of digital shopping on in-store purchases, as well as the impact of physical store sales on digital channels.