Use Marketing Analytics to Earn Buy-in and Prove Impact

Prioritize marketing analytics and data to thrive in changing markets.

Marketing analytics and data help CMOs prove their teams’ value

Marketers commonly struggle to link business outcomes to marketing data and KPIs, which impacts their ability to make the case for the impact of marketing investments. This challenge is heightened as marketing data sources continue to grow, and the line between marketing and enterprise data blurs.

Prioritizing marketing analysis and activities like attribution modeling and data management enables CMOs to prove — and improve — how crucial their teams are to meeting company goals and customer expectations.

5 Strategies to Boost Influence and Prove Marketing's Value

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    Marketing analytics are essential to the delivery of CMO priorities

    Data and analytics allow you to prove marketing’s value and work more effectively with both internal and external stakeholders.

    The forces driving the evolution of marketing data and analytics

    Marketing’s sphere of influence continues to grow, thanks to: 

    • Marketing’s continued organizational interdependence: As companies realize the value of marketing data as an enterprise asset, the CMO’s role grows broader in scope. New data sources — including digital commerce, sales, logistics, inventory and more — provide critical insights.

    • AI data dependency: In marketing, AI is increasingly an enabler of use cases. CMOs responsible for marketing analytics must consider the data that feeds AI use cases as a critical pillar of their strategy.

    • The prolonged squeeze on marketing budgets: The 2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey saw marketing budgets fall to 7.7% of company revenue, a drop of 15% year over year and a significant fall from prepandemic levels. A stronger focus on marketing analytics is necessary to defend budgets and drive marketing growth and performance.

    Implement an outcome-based measurement framework

    To scale and enhance the impact of marketing analytics, build the foundation of an outcome-based measurement framework:

    • Design a framework that aligns business outcomes with marketing goals. Strive for a clear line of sight between granular business objectives, marketing goals, KPIs, metrics, segments and data sources.

    • Collaborate on the framework. Engage both internal and external stakeholders to drive consensus of marketing’s contribution to business outcomes and alignment on KPIs.

    • Embed formal checkpoints. Regularly review and update the measurement framework as part of data governance to maintain data quality, drive consistency and ensure continued relevance.

    Analytics and data are the foundation of efficient marketing teams

    Year after year, marketing teams are asked to “do more with less.” While budgets may be stripped down and economic disruptions make the job more challenging, there is also opportunity in this moment. AI is transforming the way organizations process and consume data. Businesses understand the power of data more than ever, setting the stage to put analytics and data at the foundation of effective marketing teams.

    Marketing analytics FAQs

    What is the role of marketing analytics in today’s environment?

    Collecting, analyzing and interpreting marketing data is essential for CMOs to observe customer behavior, discover market trends and gauge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Armed with this information, CMOs can make more informed decisions, and better support and educate stakeholders. CMOs who are closest to their marketing analytics team activity stand the greatest chance of proving marketing’s value — and getting credit for it.

    How can CMOs ensure marketing data accuracy?

    CMOs must have their teams implement data stewardship practices, in accordance with enterprise data governance, to ensure adherence to data privacy regulations, robust data quality and consistency. This encompasses data collection, cleaning and validation processes amid the integration of marketing and customer data across the organization.

    What is the role of AI in marketing analytics today?

    AI enables marketing teams to process vast amounts of data quickly, make predictions, discover segments, generate insights and prescribe next best actions. The algorithms help identify patterns and trends, enabling deeper, more granular insight into customer behavior than previously available. The CMO’s role in driving toward a solid foundation of marketing analytics and customer data is critical to support most marketing AI use cases, especially with the rise of generative AI.

    Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.