If there is one thing marketers today must know, it’s their analytics. You need to know where to find them, how to speak to them, and most importantly, how to act upon them. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. In the past ten, five, even two years, marketing analytics have changed immensely, from the amount of data available to the tools we use. Despite working endlessly to keep up with the changing analytics landscape, mistakes happen, which is why we put together a list of the biggest marketing analytics mistakes to avoid.
1. Focusing on the wrong KPI
When it comes to analytics, your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can make or break your business goals. So it’s ever-important that you’re focusing on the right ones. With over 100 marketing KPIs and metrics to choose from, setting KPIs that align with company goals and objectives is a great way to ensure you’re not missing anything.
At the end of the day, business leaders need to know whether or not their marketing spend is getting a positive return on investment. Additionally, 44% of marketers say increasing revenue due to marketing is their top goal. If your KPIs aren’t helping to tell this story, you’re focusing on the wrong things.
2. Relying on One Data Set
With all the data available today, it’s unbelievable how many marketers are still making decisions off a single set of data. You can’t get the full scope of how well your latest campaign is performing by focusing solely on website data. Expanding your view can help you to find patterns or relationships within the data that you may not have otherwise known. For example, maybe it’s not that your latest promotion has terrible conversion rates, maybe it’s outperforming for a specific age range and all you need to do is tighten up the targeting.
If working with multiple sets of data is going to take too long or feels overwhelming, working with less data is not the solution. You need better analytics tools.
3. Turning to The Data Too Late
Many marketers often turn to their data for help when it’s already too late. Data should be incorporated into your strategic planning from the start. In fact, 32% of marketers believe analytics and competitive insight are the most important factors in supporting marketing strategy. For example, if you’re looking to start a new ad campaign, your analytics should guide you in selecting the best audience to target, which can then guide your creative and messaging. If you wait too long to utilize the data you have available, you could be wasting valuable marketing budget.
4. Making Data-Driven Assumptions
This mistake is one of those mistakes people don’t often know they’re making. The whole point of data and analytics is to use it to make better decisions, but oftentimes those decisions look more like assumptions. This happens when people don’t take the time to understand the WHY behind their metrics. When you’re able to understand why your metrics are failing or succeeding, you’ll get more specific with your insight and know where to focus.
But finding the WHY can be tricky. It requires slicing and dicing endless dashboards to find answers. This process can be very time-consuming which is why people often make assumptions instead of confident data-backed decisions. Automated analytics software, like Unsupervised, leverage AI to get to that WHY faster and help prevent marketers from making mistakes like this.
5. Failing to Take Action
After you spent weeks collecting, preparing, and analyzing the data, the biggest mistake you can make is to not take action on it. Whether the data is stale by the time you find insights or you’re not finding valuable insights, failing to take action defeats the entire point of marketing analytics. If you’re failing to take action it’s time to reevaluate your company’s culture around data, your analytics tools and systems, and data literacy. Learn from your analytics, implement changes, and evaluate how those changes impacted your goals. Marketing analytics require consistency and commitment from the entire company in order for them to drive growth.
As the need for data literate marketers grows, it’s important to avoid making these simple mistakes when it comes to managing your marketing analytics. If your analytics tools are holding you back from your marketing goals, speak to one of our experts today to see how the Unsupervised automated analytics platform can help.
