CMO.AI: Empowering the Insights-Driven CMO

By John Marcinuk Head of Growth Marketing

Data has always been important to marketing, but it's become even more critical.

Major shifts in competition and customer behavior are propelling enterprises into a new data-driven era – one where opportunities to accelerate growth and achieve a competitive advantage are increasingly determined by an organization's ability to make intelligent, data-driven decisions.

Tasked with leading the charge are CMOs and their marketing teams, who are being asked to leverage data in new ways – and at the same time, squeeze more out of their budgets. It's a perfect storm of challenges, all aimed at the CMO.

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE CMO

Data-driven technology is advancing at a breakneck pace, growing in both scale and sophistication. Yet, despite all this innovation and advancement, most organizations are still using data in relatively traditional ways, presenting many challenges for the CMO.

Inconsistent or siloed data: Marketing teams need high-quality data to make informed decisions, yet this data is often spread across silos, making it difficult to get a holistic view of the customer.
Using data to drive experience: CMOs are under pressure to create one-to-one personalized customer experiences. But doing this effectively requires deep insights into customer behavior, which can be difficult to glean from disparate data.
Pressure to show ROI: With marketing budgets under more leadership scrutiny, CMOs are under increasing pressure to show a marketing ROI that justifies their spending.
Rapidly changing landscape: The marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, making it difficult for marketers to keep up with the latest trends and technologies that could support all these efforts.

Despite these challenges, there is an opportunity for CMOs to use data to their advantage – and emerge as insights-driven leaders.

USE A TACTICAL APPROACH

Start by developing a strategy aligned with your business goals, looking closely at the data that's available, and the channels your brand and customers are using, to determine how each can be leveraged to drive growth and automation.

Get the right data in place
Having a clean, consistent, and unified view of your customer requires access to the right data sources, such as social media data, website data, customer relationship management (CRM) data, and more.
Build a strong data foundation
Once you're pulling data from the right sources, it’s time to build a strong data foundation by putting the right systems and processes in place to support your insights-driven initiatives.
Leverage insights that drive customer experience
From this foundation, you can gather the intelligence necessary to launch targeted messages that get you closer to your customer and power the one-to-one conversations people and brands are looking for.
Measure and optimize your results
With marketing efforts underway, it's important to measure and optimize the results that help refine your marketing strategy, avoid potential pitfalls, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.
Putting this all together can be a challenge on its own, which is why we created CMO.AI.

WHAT IS CMO.AI?

CMO.AI from Centific is a data-driven approach to marketing that optimizes marketing – and the operations that support it – to help your business leverage customer data and best-in-class technology in all-new ways through:

Data-driven insights that inform every decision you make, from strategy and planning to execution and optimization.
Real-time experimentation that uses technology to test, learn, and iterate quickly to find what works and optimize for results.
One-to-one personalization that delivers the right message, to the right person, at the right time at scale.
Omnichannel orchestration that weaves together the best mix of channels and tactics to reach your customers where they are.

Delivering personalized experiences to people at scale is a challenge all CMOs face. Our CMO.AI solution helps you discover the data patterns that matter, so you can create relevant experiences for each customer and move the digital needle.

THE OBSTACLES TO INTELLIGENT MARKETING

While marketing spend is increasing and business confidence is growing, Gartner's release of the 2022 CMO Spend Survey shows that trouble may be bubbling under the surface for many major brands. Sitting atop the slight increase in budgets, nearly 60% of CMOs say their team can't execute their brand's strategy.

There is also a disconnect that goes beyond people power: 22% of CMOs cite technology challenges as one of their top three concerns for in-house capabilities – meaning the focus on growth is still happening, but CMOs may not have the tools to execute.

Fortunately, there are a few things CMOs can do to get back on track.

LET DATA DO THE WORK FOR YOU

Insights-driven marketing is the future, and CMOs are leading the way. Here's how to make data more important to your decision-making:

Make Data a Priority: Data should be at the center of everything you do. From setting goals and measuring success to making decisions about which channels to invest in and which campaigns to pursue, data should be driving your entire decision-making process.
Invest in intelligent tools: Intelligent tools are essential for making sense of the deluge of data. By investing in a Customer Data Platform (CDP), you enable your team to collect, organize, and analyze data for clearer insights into customer needs and behaviors.
Foster a Data-Driven Culture: An insights-driven culture starts with leadership. Set the tone for your team by making data a priority and investing in intelligent tools. But also make sure to encourage your team to let data inform their decisions, providing them with the training and resources they need to be successful.
Build Your Business Capabilities: Data is only as good as the insights it produces. To make those insights actionable, you need to have the right people with the right skillsets to get a clear understanding of your customer journey and align your team around customer experience objectives.

THE FUTURE OF INSIGHTS-DRIVEN MARKETING

As more and more companies embrace insights-driven marketing, it’s only going to evolve to become more valued and sophisticated as it enables CMOs and their teams to make even better predictions of customer needs and behaviors.

We’re already seeing the rise of artificial intelligence in marketing, with chatbots and intelligent assistants becoming more common. And as machine learning gets better at understanding customer intent, we can expect even more personalized and relevant experiences to come.

Heading toward this more insights-driven future, CMOs will be leading the way, supported by the data and technology that help them stay ahead of the curve. Contact us to learn more.