What's making UK marketing chiefs feel inadequate? Coping with unstructured data

CMOs are facing a tsunami of peer-to-peer data, says IBM...

Unstructured data: CMOs feel unready to deal with the explosion in digital interactionsPhoto: Jeff Turner

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) in the UK and Ireland feel less prepared to deal with the digital data explosion and the rise of social media than their counterparts elsewhere in the world.

The finding is one of the results from an IBM survey of more than 1,700 CMOs globally, including 92 CMOs working in the UK and Ireland.

According to the IBM 2011 Global CMO Study, the vast majority of CMOs in the UK and Ireland - 79 per cent - expect significant change ahead in their role but flagged up several areas where they do not feel adequately prepared.

The biggest area where UK and Ireland CMOs feel underprepared is in dealing with the so-called data explosion - cited by 87 per cent of respondents as an area of concern. This was followed by growth of channel and device choices, cited by 80 per cent. Social media was also an area of high concern - flagged by 70 per cent as something they don't feel well equipped to manage.

The research indicates that UK and Ireland CMOs feel considerably less prepared in these areas than their global counterparts - 71 per cent, 65 per cent and 68 per cent of whom also tagged the areas cited above as underprepared.

"UK and Ireland CMOs are more concerned about their ability to process and make sense of the data they can access," noted Elaine Fletcher, partner in the business analytics and optimisation group at IBM global business services.

According to the research, the rise of multiple online communication methods such as email, blogging and social networking, coupled with the proliferation of smartphones and other connected devices, is making it increasingly difficult for CMOs to ensure a consistent cross-channel marketing message.

Online interactions and digital tools and services are generating a wealth of unstructured data - something CMOs do not feel well equipped to deal with currently, said Fletcher.

"We started 2011 with a status where the amount of digital information had grown to 988 exabytes. That is a phenomenal amount of information," she said. "CMOs are trying to integrate day in, day out the different sources of information about their customer base that are flying around their organisation.

"Every day now 15 petabytes of new information is being generated. This year the number of emails sent every day is over 200 billion. That's completely different to the kind of structured information that CMOs have been working with for the past few years. There is a data explosion."

When it comes to analytics, the data explosion is disrupting CMOs' modus operandi, Fletcher added: "Largely, the CMOs have been working with nicely processed, computer-generated structured data until now. They've been able to do nice predictive analytics models based on that structured data. That's a very different world to having this tsunami of unstructured data, often peer to peer."

Customers talking to other customers about a company or product or service - rather than addressing the company directly - presents a difficulty for marketers stuck gathering data via traditional methods such as market research and call centres, she added.

"So I might be talking to you about something, and I might express something in terms of my opinion or sentiment about the organisation or a particular transaction that I've done with that organisation to you guys, peer to peer, that I certainly wouldn't send in or mention in the call centre when I'm in contact with that organisation. So it's a completely different level in terms of the volume and the complexity of processing that unstructured information."

The survey found UK and Ireland CMOs are still relying on...

... traditional processes such as market research and customer service feedback to gather the data they use to influence their strategy decisions, rather than seeking to glean a more rounded view of customers by using tools to mine and tap into the wealth of unstructured data.

CMOs are still relying on traditional processes such as market research and call centres, despite the wealth of unstructured data availablePhoto: Shutterstock

While the vast majority of UK and Ireland CMOs use traditional marketing research methods such as market research and customer service feedback - 87 per cent and 76 per cent - to help them make strategy decisions, only 32 per cent look at blogs and just 37 per cent analyse online communications such as Twitter and Facebook to influence their strategy, the research found.

"Although there was a lot of interest in one-to-one interaction with customers to understand their needs, largely where CMOs are reaching out to understand the market and to shape their policy isn't one-to-one with customers. They're still reaching out to the traditional sources that they've worked with for many years," Fletcher said.

"Why? I think it's got a lot to do with the data explosion issue. Today, they're not in a position to get that knowledge directly. They have the data and the access to it but they're not able to turn that into insight, so they're still having to reach out to third parties. But as a part of the strategic change that CMOs are going through now they're having to then work with that data explosion, and do the one-to-one analysis of every single interaction that every single customer has with them each day."

Other findings from the survey include that the vast majority - 78 per cent - of UK and Ireland CMOs plan to increase their use of social media in future. The same proportion also plans to ramp up their use of customer analytics. Mobile apps were also seen as a future priority, with 72 per cent of respondents planning to increase their use.

CRM was the most popular future technology they planned to use more of, cited by 83 per cent of respondents. The least popular technology for ramping up in future was email marketing, cited by just 47 per cent of respondents.

When it comes to barriers that UK and Ireland CMOs feel are preventing them from using more technology in marketing, the two biggest issues are cost, cited by 68 per cent of respondents, and lack of ROI certainty, cited by 65 per cent.

But despite an understanding of the increasing importance of technology tools to the marketing function, the vast majority of CMOs in the UK and Ireland do not believe they need to boost their digital nous. Less than a third - some 29 per cent - of the CMOs cited technology savvy as a capability required for personal success over the next three to five years, the research found, and only around a fifth, 22 per cent, rated social media expertise as important to their personal development.

The vast majority of respondents - 80 per cent - cited leadership skills as the key consideration to furthering their personal development.

IBM's research also found the average tenure for a CMO in the UK and Ireland is four years.