In today’s digital economy, businesses everywhere are transforming to stay profitable and relevant to their customers and we are seeing a shakeup of traditional roles and responsibilities. What this means for marketers, is that it is no longer enough to be “brand stewards”.

Instead, marketers face heightened pressure to think beyond their traditional remit and propel business-wide outcomes that result in overall growth.

Our latest Marketing Intelligence Report for Asia Pacific explores how this growth mandate has redefined marketing, drawing on insights from more than 1,000 marketers.

Leveraging data to drive growth

Marketers today not only have to lead creative brand-building and exceptional customer experience, but ensure that they are spending in the right areas and in the right ways to generate business growth. With greater access to increasing volumes of data, marketers are expected to be more data-driven in their decisions and maximise value from every investment.

Our recent study reveals that two in five of APAC marketers are shifting priorities to reflect marketing-led growth. Across the region, 91% of marketers recognise that marketing has a major role to play in driving ROI and business growth.

With this broadened responsibility, there are three key questions marketers should have top of mind:

1. For every dollar spent, what is the ROI?

2. What should I optimise to drive business impact?

3. And is every decision I make intelligent and data-driven?

While marketers are aware of their new responsibilities, there are still some roadblocks

The more data marketers can leverage, the more efficient and personalised their customer engagement strategy can be, across the lifecycle. This can be reflected in greater ROI across acquisition, engagement, and retention activities. However, many marketers struggle to connect and unify different sources of data for the insights they need. One of the challenges with this data integration is that it can require considerable time and effort, especially with 71% of marketers across APAC still doing this manually to an extent.

Additional roadblocks for marketers relate to data analytics and optimisation. Our study revealed that 37% of marketers struggle with the inability to share and collaborate on data analysis while 35% struggle to connect marketing investments to business outcomes. To understand these challenges, our study dived deeper into marketers’ data measurement processes and revealed several key issues, including:

• 54% of marketers don’t have access to daily or real-time reports

• Only 32% of marketers have fully automated cross-channel reporting

• Two in five marketers are operating in silos, measuring performance independently within each of their tools or relying on spreadsheets

Without consistent reporting and insights across channels, marketers are not equipped to make informed decisions about where to spend or not spend in order to optimise results.

Embedding a culture of data-driven marketing

As marketers take on the new mandate for growth, data will be the cornerstone of their success and this is reflected in their priorities. According to our research, marketers’ priorities for the next 1-2 years include the following: customer understanding and engagement; efficiency of data management and preparation; and creating a strategic view of overall marketing performance.

Marketers are also reporting good progress in establishing a data-driven culture with alignment of people, technologies, and processes. Across APAC, 66% of marketers report excellent progress in investing in marketing analytics platforms and gaining support from executive leadership. Focusing on these areas and refreshing marketing growth strategies will be key to cracking the code on growth and success.