In today's guest post, Dmytro Zaichenko from Coupler.io explores how to overcome common challenges marketers face when trying to make the most of their digital marketing analytics.

Digital marketing analytics comes at the core of crafting an efficient marketing strategy. It allows companies to drive revenue, develop products, and attract more users.

Marketing Analytics Challenges (Source: CMO Survey)

Below, we will explore the importance of digital marketing analytics. We'll discuss its roadblocks and solutions to them. It will help you on the way to improved sales and increased profitability.

Digital Marketing and Data Analytics

Digital marketing and analytics go hand in hand:

• the first has all the methods to collect large amounts of information

• the second is to process it and pinpoint useful insights

With marketing analytics tools, you can dive deeper into insights, spot unusual patterns, and act better.

By analyzing marketing data from many channels, you can achieve several goals at once. They include identifying clients' needs, improving business strategies, and utilizing resources efficiently.

You can then create a tailored message to fit the consumer preferences and increase their loyalty to your brand.

Why Digital Marketing Analytics Matters

Benefits from Digital Analytics Use (Source: Marketing Charts)

The more analytics metrics you track, the more accurate the consumer profile and their journey are.

When you understand ways of using customer data, it will have a huge impact on your business and pursued goals:

• Improved brand credibility: By using digital marketing analytics, you get all the information to improve a brand’s presence online and attract more social media audiences (e.g., improve Facebook, Instagram reach, etc.). It also drives brand awareness further and increases brand credibility among new and existing users.

• Saved costs and resources: Having a single place to collect and measure marketing campaigns is a lifesaver. It makes marketing activities much easier. You can adjust marketing efforts quicker with reduced spending.

• Increased income: You have access to all customer data and buying behavior with marketing metrics. This enables better prediction and growth of income.

5 Common Digital Marketing Analytics Challenges

Except for the importance of digital marketing analytics, we need to realize that some challenges exist in this realm.

Let's check out the most common marketing analytics challenges and possible solutions.

1) Missing out on essential marketing metrics

Problem:

A marketing team can miss marketing metrics due to a lack of process organization and defined goals.

As a result, you get an incomplete or inaccurate picture without the ability to measure your activities or get insights.

Solution:

You need to set the proper process for data tracking. This way, you will ensure you gather the information aligned with your current business goals.

The alignment in the product growth, business strategy, performance, and marketing analytics is a must.

There are a few more things to keep in mind:

• You need to have a marketing strategy or at least action points plan.

• Make sure a marketing team is on the same page. They need to document, track, and report marketing results.

• Identify essential marketing metrics for your current business state. You'd most likely need to track sign-ups, conversion rate, customer retention, churn, and spending per customer. Other metrics to track include website traffic for SEO, engagement for social media, etc.

• Use marketing analytics tools to track each important channel or activity. For instance, use Google Analytics to track micro-and macro-conversions. The latter includes completing a contact form, playing a website video, adding things to a wish list, clicking on the CTA, and so on.

2) Sloppy workflow

Problem:

Managing the workflow might be quite a challenge when it comes to digital marketing analytics. It happens due to the lack of skills and the inability to select marketing analytics tools that fit the business needs.

With various modern services, companies struggle to pick the right toolset. They either think there is a multi-purpose solution or try to get them all without considering the value for the business.

As a result, they buy unnecessary tools and get an extra headache of finding people who can put those tools to use.

Solution:

You need to establish a workflow based on your human capacity, business needs, and current marketing activities.

You have to come up with a list of those tools you might need. If you want to have all your marketing reports in one place, sent directly to the inbox, consider Metrics Watch.

All in all, to make an efficient workflow, spend time on choosing a toolset initially. It is better than constantly testing all the tools on the go or manually transmitting pieces of information from service to service.

3) Data all over the place

Problem:

Another digital marketing analytics challenge is having a lot of platforms, apps, and databases packed with tons of data. Also, this data is usually duplicated, inaccurate, or missing.

Companies end up with incomplete records and data holes, spending a lot of time and effort manually copying data to gather it in one place.

Solution:

Firstly, to avoid having data all over the place and have accurate information to work with, you need to encourage data hygiene practices:

• having a responsible person/team for this

• making this activity a rule on a company level (or at least encouraging people to keep data clean)

• doing regular clean-up sessions of outdated data

• dealing with duplicates and data access

Secondly, you need to think about streamlining your marketing data. It's possible via data synchronization and automation. Consider using data integrations.

For example, you're using Mailchimp, so this is an option to set a Mailchimp Google Sheets integration. You'll have all the lists, reports, and campaigns in one place, transferred automatically.

In this way, you'll have a clearer picture of your marketing data; it's stored in one place to boost reporting and data analytics.

4) Inability to use data correctly

Problem:

It is hard to put it in order and interpret and use it properly when it comes to customer information and marketing data.

Companies lack detailed reports, miss out on insights, and make wrong decisions. The reasons are a lack of skills, unwillingness to invest in the toolsets or spend resources on experiments.

Solution:

Planning to dive deep into analytics, you should come prepared.

To make appropriate business decisions based on collected information, you need to learn how to interpret data.

Make sure you have people in your team who know how to analyze data, segment it, and get the results. Again, it is not about the quantity of data you can collect. It is all about the quality of interpretations and their further impact.

Start with answering a few questions:

• What is it that you need to know from the collected information?

• How will the collected information help you with current business/marketing goals?

• What are the key points required for you to make smarter decisions?

A marketing team needs to have objectives and priorities. Besides, there's a need to learn and stay updated. Involve your team in online courses, conferences, webinars, meetups, and domain knowledge sharing.

5) Ignoring data-based predictions

Problem:

Having resources for managing marketing analytics is great, but are you ready to keep up with fast-paced market trends?

While many companies learn how to track the right metrics and know which tools they need, not everyone is capable of competing and growing.

Many marketers find it difficult to follow and predict market trends. While marketing trends call for changes in campaigns or the whole marketing strategy. They end up ignoring data-based predictions and falling behind their competitors.

Solution:

Data-based predictions help you deal with upcoming market changes and trends.

To succeed with your marketing strategy, stay flexible. Experimenting, trying new approaches, and following trends are opportunities not to miss out.

But instead of struggling with guesswork:

• leverage AI-driven solutions

• follow trends in your niche

• embrace agility within teams

• gain your own experience (do A/B testing, experiment with appealing CTAs, etc.)

Wrap up

Despite all the benefits of leveraging digital marketing analytics, it is not easy for one to master.

You need to set your goals and understand how analytics can help you achieve them.

It is all about the interpretation and quality of data – the right metrics and tools that fit your business. Find experts who know how to collect and process all the marketing data and not miss out on essential predictions and insights.

Author Bio:

Dmytro Zaichenko is a Marketing Specialist at Coupler.io, a data integration tool. He has 7+ years of experience in content making. Apart from writing, he's passionate about networking and the NBA.