The Current State of Marketing Intelligence

Velocidi was founded on the knowledge that marketers are struggling to translate data into actionable insights. Still, we wanted to know exact scope of the problem, and research more deeply the specific challenges associated with being a data-driven marketer. To that end, we commissioned Forrester Consulting to study the current state of marketers marketing intelligence initiatives and find out what makes them successful, and what causes roadblocks.

The study defined marketing intelligence as, “the processes and systems that can help turn information into actionable marekting decisions.” From the study we learned that most marketers are endeavoring to build some kind of marketing intelligence system, but were largely unsatisfied with their rates of success. On average, marketers graded their organizations a C-minus in marketing intelligence maturity.

Forrester asked marketers to rank several different components of marketing intelligence according to their importance. By a fair margin, marketers said the most important components were having access to all their data, and having reporting and analysis tools available to them.

Leveraging marketing intelligence to drive and transform a business is a complex task, and marketers reported a wide range of different barriers to achieving this goal. Not least among them were inadequate data science tools and failure to incorporate data and analytics into marketing planning and execution.

Rather than predictive or forward-looking insights, most marketers are relying on dashboards that only give a backward looking view of their marketing performance. Dashboards are sufficient for basic marketing measurement, but don’t do enough to help inform strategy going forward.

One of the more significant findings for us was that marketers were defining marketing intelligence in terms of very basic capabilities rather than a full end-to-end process that informs high level marketing decisions. Access to data is fundamentally important, but it’s only the first step toward actionable marketing intelligence.

Marketing Intelligence “has hit inflection point,” according to the Forrester. Most marketers are still figuring out how to establish marketing intelligence in their organizations, but already the ones who are successful are eclipsing the competition.