Bazaarvoice & The CMO Club release results of CMO survey
Bazaarvoice has released the results of a new chief marketing officer (CMO) study conducted in partnership with The CMO Club.
The survey, representing brands with more than USD 1 billion in annual revenue (56%) as well as smaller business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, has revealed that CMOs are turning to social data for insights into consumers, products, and brands that traditional market research and focus groups can’t. Nearly all CMOs (89.4%) have said social data has impacted at least some of their decisions. This includes 21.3% of CMOs who say social data affects at least one in every five decisions they make. It found that social data can also hint at future consumer sentiment and campaign success. Nearly half (47.3%) of all CMOs have used social data to make predictions or forecasts, most commonly to project sales.
CMOs have also been found to use social data to drive smarter decisions beyond marketing. While marketing teams and agencies most often extract the data, insights from it are used in product development, customer experience, sales, and C-level discussions. Agencies are most commonly responsible for reporting to CMOs on social data (according to 50.9%), followed by marketing research (45.6%), and marketing communications (45.6%) team. Brand management teams have also been found to make the most use of social data, according to 59.6% of CMOs. Other teams that access the data marketing collects include sales (36.8%), customer experience and web design (36%), and product management and development (35.1%). It has been noted that all CMOs (97.3%) share findings from social data with other C-level executives at least annually, and most (67%) report to the C-level on social insights at least monthly
The results have further shown that CMOs believe social data reflects business trends and they use it to identify consumer traits and patterns that impact brand loyalty and awareness. CMOs are most confident in social data’s effectiveness in analysing consumer sentiment toward individual products and product lines, rating their confidence level 6.4 out of 10, on average. As a whole, 83.3% of CMOs believe social data is at least somewhat effective in indicating discernible trends or patterns that may impact the business. And 77.9% find social data at least somewhat effective in analysing the influence of individuals or groups. Most CMOs (82.3%) are at least somewhat confident that their brands’ social efforts have a measurable impact on brand awareness, while 81.5% are at least somewhat confident that their social initiatives have a measurable effect on brand loyalty.
Brett Hurt, founder and CEO, Bazaarvoice commented on the findings: “The best big data story to be told is how social data impacts the organisation to transform business. CMOs have historically been the closest to the customer, and they are now the ones who are leading the charge to use this data to evolve and elevate their brands and business. With word of mouth being digital for the first time in human history, they can listen to their customers like never before and bring that learning to their entire company, not just in marketing. This is tremendously exciting for any marketer, and really any executive and it will change business forever – creating more customer-centric processes, organisations, and companies.”