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First, you may already be using data from customer relationship management (CRM) tools and market research to inform campaigns. But a wider array of data signals is available, from analytics on your brand's website (that could tell you your most popular products, for instance), to audience data (that could give a glimpse of age, gender, or interests), to contextual insights about which device, location, or media type delivered the most success for a campaign. The trick is to know all the sources of data available, and figure out which can fuel smarter creative.

Too often, the creative agency and production shop are brought into the campaign process after the media strategy has been decided. By informing the creative agency of all the data from the outset of the project, you can work with the agency to build more relevant creative strategies for your target audience.

Why are marketers stuck in 2010? There are four reasons:The crushing pace of technological change — A feeling of helplessness about the pace of change leads to uncertainty about direction, effectiveness, and even personal relevance as a marketing leader. Marketers rely on what they’ve always done because they don’t understand the changing world.

Over-reliance on technology and automation — Today, marketing has become a glorified IT department. Marketing decisions are being made by statisticians and data scientists in ways that may increase efficiency – and maybe even sales leads — but drive us away from the heart of our customers.

Organizational paralysis — Companies formed departments and teams years ago to work on social media, content, and other initiatives that don’t work like they used to. Becoming “locked-in” to marketing tactics that simply don’t work any longer might be due to outdated agency relationships, organizational resistance, cultural obstinance, lack of skilled leadership, relentless bureaucracy … or some combination of these factors.

So, your preferred influencer has a million followers on Instagram. Are those followers real or fake?Even Fortune 500 companies can’t always tell. Look at Procter & Gamble, for example. Last year, two of their brands (Olay and Pampers) placed in the top 10 brands using influencers with large fake follower counts. The number one brand on that list was Ritz-Carlton. The hotel and hospitality group used “influencers” whose followers were 78 percent bought and paid for, instead of the real deal.

In the long run, influencers grab eyeballs but don’t necessarily help grow businesses. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the star-gazing aspect of it all and wind up valuing essentially meaningless metrics over actually building your brand.

If the influencer goes off-script or causes a scandal, you get tanked too. And there seems to be no end of ways for some influencers to get into public trouble. Just ask YouTuber Logan Paul, whose posting of video footage of a dead body earned him months of bad press and tough consequences.

One of the first things that jumps out from the year-over-year data is the consistency of the top five responsibilities. From martech staff and managers up to more senior directors and VPs, these are the core functions that these roles deliver to the organization: Research and recommend new marketing technology products. Operate marketing technology products as an administrator. Train and support marketing staff on using marketing technology products. Integrate marketing technology products with each other. Monitor data quality within marketing technology products.

It is disappointing that, for the second year in a row, performing data privacy and compliance reviews and performing security reviews both remained at the bottom of the list of martech responsibilities — and even dropped a few percentage points.

enior roles are much more likely — 37% to 42% more likely — to: Pay for marketing technology products from a budget, partially or fully (71%) Negotiate business terms for purchasing marketing technology products (68%) Approve or veto purchase of marketing technology products (68%)