Ademilua urges marketers to convert  customer insights into revenue 

Mercy Iheoma Ihedigbo

A lecturer of Marketing at Covenant University, Dr. Aderemi Victor Ademilua, has urged marketers and businesses to move beyond the mere collection of customer data and focus on converting insights derived from such information into measurable revenue.

Ademilua, who is also the founder of 1603 Media Consulting Limited and Demil Realties Limited, made the call while delivering a presentation titled “Data-Driven Marketing: Turning Insights into Revenue” at a webinar organised by the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) in August 2026.

He said data-driven marketing had become central to sustainable business growth, stressing that organisations could no longer afford to treat customer information merely as a tool for preparing reports, dashboards or measuring past campaign performance.

According to him, the real value of data  lies in the ability of businesses to transform customer information into actionable insights that influence decisions, improve customer experiences and ultimately generate revenue.

Drawing from a survey of 33 marketing professionals, Ademilua said 96.7 per cent of respondents rated data-driven marketing as either “very” or “extremely” important to their businesses.

He added that 96.9 per cent of the respondents reported at least moderate revenue improvement from data-driven marketing, while 90.9 per cent said they used marketing analytics often or always.

The findings, he said, demonstrated the  growing importance of data and analytics in determining how businesses understand their customers, develop products, design campaigns and allocate marketing resources.

However, Ademilua identified poor data quality as one of the major barriers preventing businesses from fully benefiting  from customer information.

He said 30.3 per cent of respondents identified poor data quality as the leading  obstacle to extracting value from data.

According to him, inaccurate, incomplete, outdated or fragmented information  could produce faulty insights and ultimately lead to poor business and marketing decisions.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” he cautioned, urging organisations to invest in data accuracy, integration, privacy, security and regular data cleansing.

The marketing scholar stressed that the  increasing strategic importance of data meant that it should no longer be confined to the marketing department or used solely to evaluate completed campaigns.

He said data had become a strategic resource that should increasingly influence decision-making at the highest levels of organisations.

“Data has moved from the marketing dashboard to the boardroom,” Ademilua  said.

He also identified personalised marketing as a major but underexploited source of revenue, noting that 39.4 per cent of respondents in his survey considered it the strongest source of return on investment.

He urged marketers to make greater use of customer segmentation, behavioural  information and predictive analytics to ensure that the right messages, products and offers reached the right customers at the right time.

According to him, effective personalisation could improve customer engagement, increase conversion rates and strengthen customer loyalty while enabling brands to make better use of their marketing budgets.

Ademilua further noted that the increasing adoption of marketing analytics showed that intuition alone was no longer sufficient for businesses seeking to remain competitive in an increasingly data-driven marketplace.

“Analytics is becoming the engine of  marketing performance,” he said.

He noted that the 90.9 per cent adoption rate recorded in his survey reflected the growing reliance of marketing professionals on analytics in making strategic and operational decisions.

The lecturer, however, advised marketers to make revenue the “North Star” of marketing analytics rather than concentrating excessively on conventional performance indicators such as impressions, clicks, reach and engagement.

He said marketers should increasingly focus on metrics that demonstrate actual  commercial value, including conversion rates, customer lifetime value, customer retention, customer acquisition costs and the direct revenue contribution of marketing activities.

According to him, a campaign should not be considered successful simply because it generated high visibility or engagement if such activity could not ultimately  contribute to business growth.

AI to reshape marketing

Ademilua also called for the development of aIready marketing teams capable of combining human creativity, data intelligence and artificial intelligence.

He said marketers should not view artificial intelligence merely as an automation tool, but as a technology capable of transforming the entire marketing value  chain.

According to him, 54.5 per cent of the  marketing professionals surveyed expected AI to have the greatest impact on marketing over the next five years.

“AI is set to reshape the marketing value chain,” he said, urging organisations to  develop the skills, talent and technological infrastructure required to effectively deploy AI and data.

He said the future of marketing would  require professionals who could interpret data, understand customers, deploy technology and still retain the human creativity needed to develop compelling brands and experiences.

Ademilua also advocated the establishment of a continuous “Data-Insight-Action-Revenue” system through which businesses collect data, generate insights, activate campaigns, measure results and use the outcomes to improve subsequent decisions.

He explained that such a system would  enable brands to continuously learn from customer behaviour rather than treating individual marketing campaigns as isolated exercises.

“The objective is to create a continuous  learning system where every customer interaction generates information that improves the next decision,” he said.

MTN case study

Using MTN Nigeria as a case study, Ademilua demonstrated how customer data, segmentation, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and real-time personalisation could be deployed at scale to generate commercial value.

He said the telecommunications company analyses millions of customer interactions, including call records, internet usage, recharge patterns, location information and app behaviour, to develop customer profiles and support targeted marketing.

According to him, effective segmentation and personalisation could improve conversion rates and average revenue per user, while predictive churn analytics could help businesses identify customers at risk of leaving and enable them to deploy proactive retention strategies.

He said such interventions could reduce customer attrition, increase customer lifetime value and strengthen recurring  revenue.

Ademilua also highlighted the use of  AI-powered customer experience tools, including the Zigi Voice Assistant on the MyMTN Nigeria app, noting that such technology could facilitate faster and more efficient resolution of customer issues.

He added that improved customer experience could create opportunities for stronger retention, cross-selling and deeper customer relationships.

The lecturer further identified real-time campaign optimisation as another major benefit of data-driven marketing.

He explained that live dashboards could enable marketers to monitor campaigns as they progressed and make timely  adjustments to promotions, pricing, targeting and other campaign variables.

According to him, such an approach could reduce marketing waste and improve campaign returns by replacing guesswork with real-time decision-making.

He also cited location-based marketing as an important application of customer data, saying geographic and mobility information could be used to develop and deliver location-specific offers and services.

For Ademilua, the MTN example demonstrated how customer information could be transformed from a passive database into a strategic commercial asset.

Become insight-driven

The Covenant University don therefore  urged marketers and brands to become “insight-driven” rather than merely “data-rich.”

He warned that collecting huge volumes of customer information without the  capacity to analyse and convert it into actionable insights would not necessarily translate into business growth.

He recommended that organisations  strengthen their data governance systems, improve the quality and integration of customer information, and train marketing personnel to work effectively with emerging technologies.

He also urged brands to deepen the use  of customer data in creating personalised customer experiences while making privacy, security and responsible data management integral components of their operations.

According to him, businesses must strike a balance between extracting commercial value from customer information and respecting customers’ privacy and trust.

He maintained that the ultimate objective should be to create a system in which data informs decisions, decisions drive action and marketing actions produce measurable revenue.

Ademilua said brands that would remain competitive in the emerging marketing  environment would be those capable of continuously learning from their customers and converting such insights into timely, personalised and commercially effective interventions.

He therefore challenged marketing professionals to rethink their traditional roles, embrace analytics and artificial intelligence, and position marketing as a direct contributor to business growth rather than merely a cost centre.

The webinar underscored the growing convergence of marketing, data and technology, with Ademilua’s presentation highlighting the need for businesses to build systems that can move seamlessly from customer information to insight, from insight to action and ultimately from action to measurable revenue.