BCG says only 2 percent of marketers are leveraging their data

DATA can help marketers in a number of ways. It can help understand audiences, optimize marketing spend, and better customize campaigns. The truth is, marketers aren’t unaware of the benefits data can provide them with.

Yet, only two percent of marketers are really leveraging their data according to a new BCG study. The think tank’s analysts see this group as the people (at the multi-moment stage of data-driven marketing maturity) who use dynamic execution optimized toward single-customer business outcomes across channels.

BCG’s study found that the bulk of today’s marketers only try to use data and are either in the emerging or connected stage of maturity when it comes to data-driven marketing.

At the connected stage, marketers use data integration and activation across channels with demonstrated link to ROI or sales proxies.

At the emerging stage, lower than the connected stage in the rungs of data, businesses are able to use some owned data in automated media buying with single-channel optimization and testing.

According to BCG, organizations in the retail, financial services, and travel & leisure industries are farthest along the data-driven marketing maturity curve.

Those in the CPG and automotive industries were among those lagging behind the most — still struggling to perfect simple campaign execution strategies.

How marketers can accelerate their data-maturity

Organizations looking to move from nascent to emerging on the data-maturity curve will find it the easiest. For them, all they need to do is understand the current data pool they have and implement a system that can help make sense of this data for use in marketing projects.

Moving from emerging to connected, however, is a bit challenging. Marketers looking to smarten up to the next phase of marketing data-maturity need to pilot cross-functional teams, and acquire key skills and talent.

Marketers also need to co-locate functions aside from defining common KPIs and combining online data entry if they want to gain the technical competence to mature to the status of connected-marketer.

Finally, for organizations seeking to move to the multi-moment maturity phase from the connected phase, the process is a little longer, but the benefits are great.

According to BCG, brands who connect (with customers0 meaningfully at scale add up to 20 percent in incremental revenues and bring costs down by up to 30 percent.

Organizations seeking multi-moment data-maturity when it comes to marketing need to insource key capabilities and embed agile teaming and a fail-fast culture. Further, they need to build capabilities to identify marketing signals across online and offline channels and link objectives to business KPIs.

At the end of the day, BCG believes all organizations must get smarter with how they use data in their marketing functions. Given the benefits, no matter how slow the transformation, analysts believe organizations undertaking the journey and climbing the maturity curve faster will benefit significantly.

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