To create truly relevant and competitive campaigns, marketers need at-their-fingertips access to current data-driven insights on their audience and markets. But research with over 200 CMOs across Europe shows that many feel that they are being held back from achieving their team's full data insights potential due to certain barriers. These range from their ability to meet regulatory and privacy criteria, to not having critical data, or lacking the necessary talent within their organisations to move swiftly from comprehensive data to insights.

Breaking down the barriers to data-driven insights

These are significant challenges for CMOs and their marketing teams to overcome, but they aren’t impossible to solve.

The key to surmounting them lies in putting data and the insights derived from them front and center in the organization – and making those as easy as possible to understand for non-analysts.

By making insights accessible and consumable, marketing leaders can demonstrate the power of prescriptive analytics and persuade key stakeholders, such as the Chief Tech Officer (CTO), Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO), to push through the necessary change programs. Marketing leaders who can secure C-suite support this way will help their firms not only to embrace data-driven insights but to act on them at pace.

“In a volatile market with increased competition, data is only as valuable as what you do with it – and what you do fast.

"Analytics need to show data and insights in a visually compelling way that makes it easy for decision-makers in teams across the company to slice and dice it however they want to.

"It’s a by-product of the faster world that we live in and one that requires CMOs to build a healthy understanding with their CTO or CIO if they are looking to build a long-term, data driven competitive edge.”

- Gonzalo Garcia Villanueva, global CMO at NielsenIQ.