CMOs: Most Projects Still Aren’t Using Marketing Analytics

February 25, 2014

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | B2B | Data-driven | Digital | Marketing Budgets | Staffing

DukeCMOSurvey-Percentage-Projects-Using-Marketing-Analytics-Feb2014Most projects fail to use available or requested marketing analytics, report American CMOs responding to the latest CMO Survey conducted by the Duke Fuqua School of Business. The study’s results indicate that on average, only 32.5% of projects use analytics – and that’s actually a slight improvement from the past couple of biannual studies, where usage has hovered around the 30% mark.

Consistent with the relatively low use of analytics, CMOs report a middling contribution for analytics to their companies’ performance. Asked to rate to what degree the use of marketing analytics contributes to their company’s performance, CMOs responded with an average rating of 3.7 on a 7-point scale (where 7 is highest). That was a slightly better result than in August 2013’s survey, likely corresponding with the slight uptick in the percentage of projects reported to make use of analytics. Still, more than twice as many CMOs said that marketing analytics doesn’t contribute at all to their company’s performance (a 1 on the 7-point scale) than said it contributes very highly (a 7).

Finding the right talent appears to be a real pain point (as evidenced by this chart). On a 7-point scale (7 = has the right talent), about one-third of respondents rated their company’s analytics talent as a 1 (9%) or 2 (24.5%). For those looking for the bright side, the mean rating of 3.6 was up from the average rating of 3.4 in the prior survey.

Almost 4 in 10 respondents said they had added analytics talent to their marketing organization during the past year – generally reporting that it was challenging to find the right talent.

While the results continue to show difficulties across the board for the use of marketing analytics, they are at least a slight step up from the previous survey. And CMOs continue to want to spend more – forecasting an average of 12.2% of their budgets to be spent on analytics in the next 3 years, compared to an average of 7.1% currently spent. (Those forecasts might not mean too much, though.)

Looking at how those spending projections break down by company type, the study finds that:

  • While B2C product companies easily allocate the largest share (9.9%) of their current budgets to marketing analytics, it’s B2C services companies that plan to spend the most in the next 3 years (12.9% share);
  • B2B services companies currently devote the smallest share of their budgets (5.6%) to analytics, but see that more than doubling to 11.4% during the next 3 years; and
  • Those firms generating more of their sales via the internet tend to spend more on marketing analytics.

About the Data: The CMO Survey is conducted online twice a year. The latest survey was fielded from January 14 to February 4, 2014. The survey had 408 respondents, of whom 88% were VP level or above.

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