In business, it’s rare to find a single solution that solves multiple problems at once. But when it comes to the greatest challenges marketing executives face today, one underlying issue connects nearly all of them: data.
Fragmented data, poor-quality data, overwhelming amounts of data, and/or a limited ability to extract actionable insights from it exacerbates all of marketing executives’ top pain points—from driving revenue to proving ROI to harnessing the incredible potential of AI.
The good news? By improving the quality, integration, and accessibility of their data, marketers can address all of those pain points at once, creating exponential value.
Read on to learn how challenges related to media fragmentation, visibility, revenue generation, proving ROI, talent effectiveness and retention, and AI adoption are all affected by data problems, and what steps marketing leaders can take to alleviate them.
If data challenges lie at the heart of marketers’ biggest pain points, then media fragmentation lies at the heart of those data challenges. From social media fragmentation to emerging complexity in the search space to the rise of commerce media, marketing efforts are increasingly spread across a growing number of platforms, channels, partners, and tools. This is creating major challenges for marketing organizations, with agency leaders naming siloed/disconnected systems as one of the most urgent issues facing their organizations.
Data fragmentation stemming from those siloed systems makes it difficult to track the customer journey at even a basic level. “When the view of the customer journey is fragmented, it’s difficult to identify quality touchpoints and how they’re working together,” says Lisa Olszewski, VP of Brand Development at Basis. “Which, in turn, makes it difficult to build a smooth and valuable experience for the customer.”
Building that seamless customer experience is crucial to marketing teams’ primary goals: driving revenue, building their brand, and forging trust and lasting connections with target audiences. Fragmentation in media and data doesn’t just complicate customer journey tracking—it sets the stage for many of the other challenges marketing leaders face today.
Data problems make it difficult for marketing executives to drive revenue efficiently—a goal that’s under increasing pressure from all sides.
For marketing leaders at brands, that pressure is compounded by growing skepticism around the CMO role itself. Some companies are experimenting with eliminating the role altogether, while others are turning to fractional CMOs. And even for those retaining full-time CMOs, the role is evolving. “CMOs today aren’t just expected to be brand stewards as they were in years past—the role is now blended with finance and tech,” says Grace Briscoe, EVP of Client Development at Basis. “Their biggest challenge, and objective, is to shift the view of marketing from a cost center to a profit driver.”
Agency leaders face similar demands, as rising costs and shrinking profit margins increase the need to demonstrate measurable business impact. At the same time, as economic volatility persists, marketing budgets are under greater scrutiny, with many agency and brand leaders expected to do more with less.
Amidst all this pressure, fragmented data hinders marketing teams from driving revenue. Specifically, it slows their ability to evaluate the effectiveness of investments across channels and make real-time adjustments. Even when raw data is technically accessible, it doesn’t always lead to meaningful insight due to fragmentation or a lack of tools or skills. “Most leaders have visibility into campaign data, but they might be lacking the strategic context for what story those data points are telling, and how it’s actually moving the business forward,” says Olszewski.
The manual effort required to stitch together data from disparate sources not only causes delays, but also raises the risk of human error, further limiting a team’s ability to act strategically. What’s more, this lack of visibility makes it challenging to connect media investments to business outcomes in a cohesive, narrative-driven way. A recent survey of marketing leaders found that the top activity they struggle to implement regularly is demonstrating how marketing activities translate into financial outcomes.
This difficulty to prove ROI has serious consequences. “Gone are the days when awareness-driving marketing investments are seen as a positive, long-term investment for a brand,” says Olszewski. “Everything needs to show some level of return with CMOs now reporting into CFOs, shareholders, and finance-minded CEOs, all of whom are scrutinizing every dollar.” Fragmented and inconsistent data makes it harder to show clear returns on marketing budgets. This not only weakens the case for future investment but, for agency leaders, can also strain already delicate client relationships.
In short, without unified, organized, and accessible data, it becomes difficult not only to understand performance and drive revenue, but to prove out even the strongest results. This makes it harder to earn internal alignment, external confidence, and continued investment.
Data fragmentation is also compounding the pressures facing hands-on-keyboard marketers. Team members typically spend hours manually pulling information from different sources and piecing it together in spreadsheets, which creates costly operational inefficiencies and raises the risk of human error.
This fragmentation has increased the difficulty of digital advertising work, with a growing majority of agency professionals reporting that their work has grown more difficult in just the past two years. This increase in complexity affects not just employee efficiency, but job satisfaction and fulfillment: When the skills of top marketing talent are underutilized, they’re less likely to stay, making data not only a performance issue, but a retention risk as well.
“If you’re finding the kind of talent that can pull insights from data and craft valuable stories around those insights, they do not want to spend six hours of their day cutting and pasting in spreadsheets to compile reports,” says Briscoe.
Finally, data issues are standing in the way of another top marketing priority: maximizing AI. In fact, 58% of industry professionals cite data quality and accessibility as major barriers to successful AI adoption.
When data is scattered across multiple systems, it's difficult to feed it into AI models in a usable form. And when that data has been stitched together manually, human error can lead to inaccurate inputs and, ultimately, unreliable outputs.
While the industry is still grappling with important questions around how to use AI in ways that safeguard data security and privacy, it’s clear that the teams that have unified and streamlined their data processes will be the ones best positioned to harness AI’s full potential.
“AI’s ability to rapidly aggregate and analyze huge data sets has the potential to give marketing organizations a wild advantage right now,” says Briscoe.
When marketing teams embrace technology that unifies and streamlines their data, they can alleviate nearly all of their most pressing pain points.
With unified data, visibility improves—not just into campaign performance, but into the stories that data tells. Revenue-driving opportunities become easier to spot and act on. The impact of marketing is easier to measure and communicate. Teams can spend less time wrangling spreadsheets, ensuring their time is spent more efficiently and more rewardingly. And as AI transforms the marketing landscape, unified, high-quality data will separate teams who can leverage it to drive real impact from those who can’t.
In these ways, by leveling up their teams’ approach to data, marketing leaders can turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s competitive edge.
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Curious to learn more about how leading brands, agencies, and publishers are approaching AI? Our report, AI and the Future of Marketing, explores how industry professionals feel about the technology today how they expect it to transform the space moving forward.
