Marketers Eye Data-Centricity Strategies to Drive Results

Marketers gather an ample amount of data, but how are they using it to uncover insight into their target market? This is what Winterberry Group recently wanted to discover with its “The Data-Centric Organization 2018” report.

The researchers of the study defined data centricity as “the extent to which an organization is culturally and operational prepared to apply audience data as a source of actionable insight in support of advertising, marketing and audience engagement.” According to the report, the majority of respondents (72.8 percent) claim they had created a data-centricity strategy as of 2017. However, just 12.3 percent of those indicated they were seeing results after implementation.

“The effort to become ‘data-centric’ continues to represent a pressing organizational priority for U.S. marketers, publishers and other data users,” wrote the authors of the report. “But despite the ongoing proliferation of audience data and sophisticated tools geared to support its usage, significant obstacles continue to hinder organizations in their effort to derive maximum value from the data at their disposal.”

As of 2017, most respondents (41.5 percent) stated that they were only “somewhat data-centric.” That being said, 44.4 percent of marketers said that they would like to be “extremely data-centric” by 2019.

Marketers Leverage Data to Increase Overall Efficiency

To boost their efficiency, previous research has indicated that marketers are shifting toward high-quality data.

Experian recently conducted “The 2018 Global Data Management Benchmark Report” to gain more insight into how marketers are leveraging their data. The majority of respondents (61 percent) said that the use of analytics was enhancing their relationships with customers, and 59 percent said it was giving them better insight for decision-making. Fifty-seven percent claimed that it was making for more efficient business practices.