Nearly 90% of CMOs claim social data has influenced their decisions, with 21% admitting it affects one in every five decisions, new research has shown.

Additionally, Baazarvoice and The CMO Club’s survey of brands with more than $1bn in annual revenue, found that nearly half of CMOs are using social data to make predictions to project sales.

The research showed that almost all CMOs (97.3%) share findings from social data with other C-level executives at least annually, and most (67%) report to the C-level on social insights at least monthly.

According to the survey, CMOs are most confident in social data's effectiveness in analysing consumer sentiment toward individual products and product lines.

Erin Mulligan Nelson, CMO at Bazaarvoice said: “In a consumer-obsessed C-suite, the CMOs are the chief customer advocates and social data is their ultimate weapon. Social data lets CMOs truly know their customers and predict consumers' future needs before they even have them. Nearly all CMOs now use this data to drive decisions.

“As the business world re-centres around serving and delighting consumers, social data is turning CMOs into customer champions – and heroes within the C-suite. And as an industry, we have just started to tap into the potential of social data.”