5 Marketing Analysis Traps To Avoid

Despite all of the lofty promises and hype surrounding marketing data and analytics, a lot of groups end up scratching their heads when it comes to results.

They’ve gathered the data, configured the views, and started generating performance reports. But after doing this for a while, they can’t help noticing that things are pretty much the same as they’ve always been, and sales performance hasn’t rocketed up-and-to-the right.

What gives? Did these groups just fall for an overblown sales pitch?

In our research, we’ve found that the struggle to deliver on the promise of marketing analysis and generate meaningful results can often be traced to a small handful of root-causes and contributing factors:

1. Weak or Nonexistent Objectives—Do you have analytics goals? Do your goals include powerful things like increasing close-rates, wallet-share, etc?
2. Reporting Instead of Diagnosing—Are you just reporting on what’s happening? Or are you digging into the data to figure-out why things are happening?
3. Viewing All Deals As the Same—Are you comparing apples to oranges? Or are you segmenting your leads, prospects and customers to get more accurate views?
4. Looking Back Instead of Forward—Do you just look at what’s already happened in the past? Or are you looking to predict what should happen in the future?
5. Describing Rather Than Prescribing—Do you expect others to decipher the data and determine what to do? Or are you prescribing the correct actions?

The good news is that each of these problems and issues is fixable. And none of the solutions are particularly difficult or cost-prohibitive. In fact, correcting some of these deficiencies may simply be a matter of changing your mindset or perspective.

So, while there may indeed be a lot of hype surrounding marketing analysis, that shouldn’t become an excuse for mediocre results. Yes, the sales pitch for marketing data and automation usually omits some critical information. But make no mistake, the underlying promise is real.

To learn more about what leading marketing operations are doing to generate more meaningful results from their data, check out these on-demand resources:

• Using Analytics to Drive Strategic Marketing Decisions — A tutorial explaining a more realistic approach for helping salespeople make data-driven decisions.
• The Fundamentals of Effective Marketing Analysis — A Webinar detailing the processes for gleaning clear insights and next steps from your data.
• The Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence — An interview explaining the benefits and evolution of the Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence