Marketing data is a double-edged sword for marketers. Gathering it, organising it, analysing it, securing it and ensuring privacy regulations are met are all crucial parts of the modern marketing skillset.
With large databases to manage, marketers need to be able to make sense of data and use it to deliver the most effective results.
This challenge breaks down into two main areas:
Data integration (or lack of)
Correlating metrics to understand ROI is difficult when so many sources of data need to be considered. Online and offline campaigns do not always aggregate well for example.
Integrating data relating to different goals can also be difficult. Brand awareness data compared to social media conversions are two very different beasts.
Normalising this data from various campaigns is not easy. But pulling off this trick is a route into a potential goldmine of data on your customers and prospects.
Lack of resources or skills
With multiple campaigns to run and enough on their plate, stepping back to take a deep dive into customer data is often overlooked by marketers – through no fault of their own.
Even if the time did materialise, having the skillset to analyse and make sense of the data is another matter. According to Gartner, even those organisations with experienced analytics staff find themselves bogged down in data preparation instead of actually analysing it.
What are the implications for marketing campaigns?
Inadequate data analysis is an opportunity wasted. Company databases are a potential treasure trove of insights into what your customers and prospects are interested in.
Even with the real-time data dashboards that some automation platforms provide, time and expertise is still required to analyse and understand the detail. Putting it into a format to share with stakeholders and help them understand the findings is also difficult.
In the absence of in-house resource, these important parts of analysing marketing campaigns are frequently overlooked. Seeking outside help can provide the time needed to carry out this analysis and present it in an easily consumable form for business stakeholders. An outside pair of eyes can also provide customer insights that may otherwise be missed.
Find out more about our B2B data services.
