Why Reacting is Better Than Acting if You're a CMO

George Bernard Shaw once said "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react." He was speaking of course, in the context of life and in that context he is 100% right. It is indeed better if we act instead of reacting - for the most part.

However, when it comes to marketing, CMOs may be better suited to reacting instead of acting - at least in one very important manner.

"The trick is not to try and guess their next 50 moves ahead of time—but rather, dynamically react to those moves as your customer makes them."

The line above comes from Oracle Marketing Cloud General Manager Kevin Akeroyd via a new AdWeek piece entitled The Marketing Puzzle Is Unsolvable, but Here's Why That Doesn’t Matter. The point Akeroyd is making speaks directly to my point - that sometimes it is better to react than act. In this case the action takes the form of predicting or guessing what a given consumer may do.

The operative word in Akeroyd's statement is "dynamically" for as he also says in the AdWeek piece "when we capture the right data, and act on it in near real-time, it (marketing) works."

Data Driven Marketing

"The most successful marketers today prioritize data-driven marketing," says Akeroyd. "And that's not about focusing on more data. It's about focusing on the right data – and making that data actionable in the right channels at the right time."

"By using a marketing cloud," adds Akeroyd, "marketers can quickly and easily access an open ecosystem of hundreds of marketing apps, media and data providers in one enterprise-ready system."

Many marketers today rely on a data management platform (DMP), which provides them with the ability to find, segment, and target the right customer at the right time based on their preferences. And seeing how the entire world, seemingly, is on a mobile device these days, a Mobile DMP is a must, too.

To learn more about a Mobile DMP, download the Mobile Data Management Platform eBook which sheds light on Mobile DMPs and answers the following questions:

• What main features should a Mobile DMP offer?
• How marketers can benefit from adding a Mobile DMP to their current marketing mix?