CMO Survey: Connecting Consumer Journey Is Top Concern

EVANSTON, Ill., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ever wonder what's keeping leading CMO's up at night? Performance Marketing agency, Leapfrog, had the opportunity to find out by participating in The Millennium Alliance's Transformational CMO Assembly where more than 50 CMO's and top marketing leaders shared their most pressing marketing challenges.

"The need to connect the consumer journey continues to be a primary challenge for many marketers," says Dave Husain, CEO and Co-founder of Leapfrog. "Too often, however, marketers are presented with solutions that fail to take into consideration current infrastructure, legacy systems and MarTech realities.  Connected data solutions that work within and easily integrate into current infrastructure are essential to maximizing return on data while minimizing disruption to marketing ecosystems."

Here are the top-three challenges identified by CMO participants:

"I need to measure and report marketing's impact across the consumer journey." 
No issue was cited more often than the need for Integrated Reporting and Insights. Organizations are no longer concerned about having enough data… big, fast, volatile data is omnipresent.  Instead, the pressing need is to connect these new, rich sources of behavioral, contextual and transactional data resulting from the consumers' interactions with brands during both their digital and offline experiences (i.e., call centers, agents, etc.). 

Once connected, they can leave fragmented performance reports behind in favor of web-based, real-time, visualization portals that provide performance insights across the entire consumer journey.  Surprisingly, this remains a critical CMO need as the challenge of data residing in numerous, disconnected systems remains.

"I need to build digital marketing solutions for consumer engagement, conversion and advocacy."
CMO's shared that sales and financial performance still rule the day.  Goals centered on increasing clicks, visits, likes, # of followers have reverted back to financial performance goals centered on converting prospects into profitable, loyal customers and creating advocates in the process. 

It is no longer sufficient to "engage consumers with my brand." The all-out focus is on compelling consumers to desired buying actions through highly personalized experiences that are relevant, targeted, timely and insights-driven. 

"I need data insights that drive and optimize the consumer experience, acquisition, retention and loyalty."
For the CMO's in attendance it isn't enough to understand "what happened." They are increasingly demanding both "why" and "what's next" insights from conversion platform-enabled analytics. By connecting the consumer journey, marketers are unleashing critical intelligence residing in their data that was previously not accessible.   With that intelligence enabled, personalized experiences are not only optimized, but "look back" insights are generated in real time at any point along the consumer journey and in aggregate. 

About Leapfrog
Leapfrog, the Performance Marketing Agency, for over 20 years has helped leading brands to grow digital market share, acquire new customers, and deliver profitable sales.  The agency's easy-to-integrate LFX Conversion Platform connects the consumer journey unlocking marketing intelligence that fuels omni-channel media buying strategies and the targeting of real-time, relevant consumer experiences that compel consumers to convert to customers.  Leapfrog analyzes performance and consumer behavior to plan and predict with the purpose of driving continuous optimization.

About Millennium Alliance
The Millennium Alliance is a leading technology, business, and educational advisory firm. The Alliance provides a framework, consisting of Assemblies Need Analysis and Executive Education, for its member communities made up of Fortune 500 CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and CMOs across a variety of industries. Millennium is quickly becoming one of the most dynamic locations for C-Level collaboration across the world.

SOURCE Leapfrog