CMOs are Using Data Measurement to Drive Growth

The sophistication of data collaboration technology solves cookie deprecation while tackling two other major CMO woes: consumer privacy and walled garden “black boxes.”

There’s no shortage of discourse on how the Chief Marketing Officer role is evolving, but one thing remains undisputed: CMOs must prove how marketing drives revenue for the business. To survive and thrive, chief marketers must understand the enterprise’s and their customers’ needs and be fully conversant with data. 

Data is the strategic growth lever for your business. Being a results-driven CMO means extracting the most value from advertising and marketing efforts. It means increasing visibility into the effectiveness of campaigns, web traffic, and audience behaviours. It means deepening measurement to discover more potent insights than previously thought possible.

While one may argue increasing third-party cookie deprecation, privacy regulation, and budget constraints will only make measurement harder, that’s actually not the case. The extensiveness of data available today, boosted by sophisticated technology that unlocks real-time access to rich customer insights, has transformed marketers’ ability to pick up signals before they even see a consumer engaging with their brand. More than ever before, marketers have the ability to access and measure their highest-value data in a secure and privacy-centered way, unearthing powerful insights that prove marketing is a revenue driver. 

Multiply Insights by Breaking Down Data Silos

Research shows organisations use an average of 28 data sources to measure campaign success. With data scattered across tools, platforms, and clouds, 97% of marketing executives struggle to assess marketing impact. What’s more, a staggering 90% of marketing, advertising, and brand management executives admit they’ve invested a lot in data collection but not enough in the measurement and analytics capabilities they need to use data to its full potential.

No matter how much data a company has, its value is finite unless brought together in a meaningful way. By using a consistent enterprise identity framework, data can be stitched together across marketing, sales, product, customer service, and more. Breaking down data silos doesn’t only create a clearer understanding of customers across channels, it allows data to be synthesised in a way that extends far beyond collection and measurement to uncover new insights that deliver more effective experiences, find new opportunities for innovation, and improve technology investments across applications and business partners. And the multiplication factor only grows. 

For example, imagine you’re a global travel service with a portfolio of brands that follow many business models. Uncovering real-time customer insights across a fragmented online and offline environment is no simple task. When identity is used to connect more dots across complex customer journeys hidden within even your own first-party data, a granular understanding of consumers is discovered while freeing up more data to drive personalisation and brand loyalty. 

Enhance Omnichannel Measurement Without Using Cookies

Forging internal connections with an enterprise identity framework is an important first step in deepening analytics and measurement. But outside their own four walls, CMOs must enhance ecosystem connectivity to unlock a holistic view of performance. 

The proliferation of channels has made measurement and attribution even more critical to optimising return on ad spend. Companies also need a way to quickly gather consented data without third-party cookies, as signal loss upends the ecosystem. Thankfully, the sophistication of data collaboration technology solves cookie deprecation while tackling two other major CMO woes: consumer privacy and walled garden “black boxes.” 

This is enabled by data clean rooms, which use privacy-enhancing technologies to safely combine and analyse select datasets to deepen measurement and analytics. With these protections built in, clean rooms not only preserve existing data connections in the cookieless world but also enable new data connections between partners, new and old, that weren’t possible before. Certain clean rooms can even provide measurement capabilities into walled gardens, from enabling multiple partnerships for multitouch attribution to delivering conversion and sales lift reporting by matching impression data to transactions. 

Omni Hotels & Resorts is a brand that understands how signal-less solutions not only deepen measurement, but create closer connections with customers. By leveraging Google’s PAIR clean room, Omni could better plan, activate, and measure audience-driven advertising by securely tapping into first-party data rather than using sensitive identifiers like cookies or device IDs. Omni’s campaigns showed a 4x increase in conversion rate over traditional cookie-based CRM audience targeting, delivering better-performing impressions and measurement of conversions after ad exposure.

Fuel Enterprise Outcomes with Marketing Goals

CMOs wear two important but distinct hats: we’re the head of marketing and an officer of the company. As CMOs, we must evaluate how marketing is advancing the business’s overall goals. 

Be a data champion by introducing other leaders in the company to marketing measurement and consumer insights that move the needle. With data, you’re speaking a common language that, if used effectively, can shape sales strategy and product roadmap. By balancing clear marketing objectives with what CRO and CFO peers are focused on, marketing becomes a clear driver of business success. For example, the C-Suite needs to understand how data analysis can create a demand-gen waterfall that leads to revenue growth.

Data is Your Power

To my fellow CMOs: think of data as a force multiplier of measurement that generates business growth. Regardless of your company’s size or available capital, data helps you understand your customers, make informed decisions, optimise operations, and drive revenue. And when internal and external partners engage in data collaboration, they discover even more valuable insights that can shape strategic decisions and unlock a world of new opportunities.

The reality of today’s ecosystem is very few companies can be successful with only their first-party data. The ability to connect silos, break into walled gardens, and uncover new insights in a cookieless, privacy-focused way is now possible but requires the use of more sophisticated solutions for identity, analytics, and collaboration. 

With the right technology, a clear strategy, and a deep understanding of how marketing drives enterprise outcomes, CMOs will strengthen their influence as business leaders while asserting marketing as the revenue-driving force that organisations need today.