Data is essential to marketing. It’s how we know our audience and measure campaign outcomes. It shows us where to adjust a campaign on the fly, for even better results. But working with data is increasingly complex, and having the right stack of technologies is invaluable.
To help marketers understand the rapidly changing world of data technology, we’ve just released our second annual Modern Marketing Data Stack report. The report identifies the leading solutions favored by marketers using Snowflake, as well as up-and-coming stars. We’ve looked at actual adoption and usage within the Snowflake Data Cloud to explore how our customers use technology to target customers, navigate complex privacy challenges, and incorporate seismic forces like generative AI.
4 forces reshaping marketing
As we looked at how Snowflake customers deploy marketing tech, we saw them working to navigate four macro forces changing the shape of modern marketing:
1. The accelerating convergence of advertising and marketing technologies
For years, there has been a breakdown of the wall between advertising and marketing technologies, and now that convergence is a reality. The two categories are inextricably linked, largely because of broader changes in the media landscape.
Marketers have to work harder to identify and reach their target audiences because the media landscape is so severely fragmented. And they have to do it while also complying with regulation and user expectations around privacy. Adding to the challenge, the fragmented landscape means that the data a marketer needs can be as siloed and scattered as the audience. No wonder the conventional idea of fully separate marketing and advertising channels has crumbled.
2. The advent of advanced AI tools, including LLMs and generative AI
Large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) are changing everything. They’re being used to identify audiences and to create, execute and measure campaigns. LLMs and generative AI are already automating and improving content generation, personalization, ad campaign optimization, chatbot interaction, market research and competitive analysis.
And the ability to have LLMs at the hands of the business, will enable everyone to use machine learning on their own datasets and this is going to revolutionize the productivity of marketers as well.
3. Rising concerns (and regulatory requirements) around data privacy
As marketers gain more and better data to understand their audiences and customize campaigns and interactions, concerns about privacy have risen significantly. Organizations are facing an increasing array of privacy requirements, and an expectation from consumers to be more transparent and privacy-focused. The bright side of all this is, if data technology led to the increasing concern for privacy, it can also be the solution to the problem. Data clean rooms are just one way organizations are managing privacy requirements while driving better results.
4. The increasing urgency for a unified approach to data, a single source of truth that can be mined for accurate, powerful insights
In a fragmented media landscape, with fractured audiences and data being generated everywhere, marketers understand the importance of preventing silos that make it harder to gain insight, focus campaigns and meet compliance obligations. We’re seeing marketers build their stacks in a way that better governs and leverages data. When we remove the friction, we can do what we love to do: deliver differentiated campaigns with optimal speed, accuracy and agility.
Propel your next era of growth
You can’t succeed in marketing without data, and data is all but worthless if you don’t have the right technologies to understand and act on it. From data capture to activation to measurement, the 80+ leaders and ones to watch named in The Modern Marketing Data Stack 2023 are helping organizations meet today’s toughest marketing challenges, and win.
To learn more about the modern marketing data stack and get more value from your data, download the full report here.
