After spending hours in meetings, answering calls and putting out fires, when on earth as a CMO, VP of Marketing or a business owner do you have time to actually analyze data? The reality is you don’t. However this also creates another problem—you don’t have the information you need to make sound decisions.
Tides of Change for Digital Marketing
We would all agree that many changes have taken place over the past 10-15 years as it relates to how we get people to interact with our brand with an end result of increasing our leads and sales. 2015 data indicates positive news for digital marketers to demonstrate their value including: increased results of digital inbound marketing, increased digital budgets, and increased focus on content and SEO.
However, it’s still clear that many businesses still struggle with either tracking or analyzing data to gain insights for strategic decision making. A common problem with companies is the inability to effectively track ROI on their traditional outbound marketing strategies.
On the contrary, one of best outcomes of implementing an inbound digital marketing program is the ability to effectively track ROI! If you are running an inbound digital marketing program and not tracking ROI, you are doing your company – and your career – a disservice because inbound marketers who measure ROI are more than 12 times more likely to be generating a greater year-over-year return.
Barriers to Measuring Marketing ROI
- Resistance to change from existing processes and systems because ”that’s the way we’ve always done it” or “that’s the system everyone likes”
- Lack of desire to change performance goals originally set based on what could be measured instead of measures that should be aligned with the goals that need to be reached
- Insufficient resources and budget implementing the systems and training needed for A/B testing or analytics to bring the intelligence necessary to drive more profitable performance
- Lack of alignment between marketing and sales to develop a cohesive and measurable approach covering the entire sales cycle
- Lack of organizational agreed-upon realistic goals for ROI measurement
- Lack of sharing of customer data across the organization
Data-Driven Micro Strategy
84% of top performing companies are using or plan to start using marketing automation by 2015. (Gleanster) Why should you care? Because data will continue to drive the need for businesses to have the people and processes in place that can collect, analyze and apply the insights into a plan that yields the necessary ROI required. If you have systems such as CRM or marketing automation platform, are they being used correctly and fully to deliver the accurate data you need? Do you know what data makes sense to collect and analyze? Are you familiar with how to convert the data into the 6 ROI metrics? Your role as a marketer today is no longer dependent upon your ability to be creative. It requires strategic thinking and application. That’s why inbound digital marketing is an art and a science—because data drives the successful results.
Organizations that want to attract, capture and convert leads to revenue use inbound digital marketing solutions like those you’ll find at Marketing Essentials. Contact us today to get started on your inbound marketing journey!
