About 8 in 10 US CMOs expect their companies to increase the use of predictive analytics and big data tools this year, with more than one-quarter expecting their use to increase by at least 25%. That’s according to survey data provided by Korn Ferry that supports recent research showing that senior management is pushing for a more data-driven, analytical culture at their organizations. The Korn Ferry survey also looks at the most effective applications for analytics thus far.
Given a choice of 4 options regarding the most effective application for analytics, CMOs were most likely to cite the measurement of business outcomes of creative programs (39.1%), while about one-third reported that their most effective application has been leveraging consumer data to support intuitive hypothesis (33.5%). That’s an interesting result given recent research looking at the interplay between human intuition and data:
- A recent survey from gyro and FORTUNE Knowledge Group found that a majority 61% of US business decision-makers believe that human insights should precede hard analytics when making decisions; while
- A survey sponsored by Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) and conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit discovered that global business leaders are much more likely to describe their approach to making significant management decisions as being “data-driven” (42%) than “intuitive” (10%).
Beyond those top two applications of analytics, almost one-quarter of respondents said their most effective has been personalizing the customer experience, a good sign given that personalization is one of the biggest trends in the industry today.
Aside from analytics, CMOs see spending growth in other areas, too. 8 in 10 report that their organization has increased its spend on content marketing and roughly the same figure say their spending on social media has increased from last year. In fact, almost 1 in 4 respondents said that at least 25% of their overall marketing budget this year goes towards social media.
According to the latest CMO Survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, social media occupies an average 7.4% of marketing budgets. While CMOs have for some time been predicting that figure to rise above 10%, the data shows that they haven’t kept up with those forecasts.
About the Data: The Korn Ferry survey was fielded in June among 215 US marketing executives.
