An increasing number of companies are heading back to the office and with the Next Normal taking shape, marketing leaders are re-evaluating their campaigns to complete the next phase of company growth. Digital channels will be key, as many organizations have upped their digital advertising spend — an amount that has spiraled up into the billions across multiple channels:
Source: emarker.com
Even during 2020, many digital marketing analysts thought that spending would slow, yet it continued to project upward — why? Digital transformation and brands’ reliance on online channels to reach customers.
Digital transformation has already been happening around the world, and 2020 accelerated that trend even further. When one in four companies plan to increase marketing activities and 78% of B2C marketing leaders aim to increase digital advertising spend this year, how can you be confident your ad spend is generating positive returns across all channels? Before you can answer that question, are you able to first extract all of your data, make it accessible to anyone on your team, and act on the insights instantly?
Marketing leaders understand that any 2021 recovery plan starts with data analytics for digital marketing. But there are issues to contend with to make sense of it all and develop a revamped plan this year.
The 3 biggest problems with digital marketing data
Marketers have more data at their fingertips than ever before. The data you’re seeking probably exists already; it just may not be readily accessible or available in an easy-to-interpret format.
Problem #1
In 2019, 92% of businesses were investing more in AI, analytics, and big data. Amidst the 2020 economic downturn, using data to inform analytics only grew in importance. Meanwhile, CMOs identified two blockers to effectively using analytics:
- Proving the value of analytics to marketing efforts
- Demonstrating the overall impact that investing in data will have on their organization
So, the first hurdle is curating all the digital marketing data cleanly so that everyone on your team, including non-technical members, can view, interpret, and act on the data in real time without requiring external resources. Numerous BI software can tap into your digital marketing channels and collect data, yet the data often requires an analyst to interpret it for marketing team members. This slows down the decision-making process and affects campaigns (see problem #3).
Since streamlining data access is an ongoing issue for marketing decision-makers, opening up access for more team members to view data would empower them to take more ownership. This will in turn free up time for more digital marketing data analysis instead of data preparation.
Problem #2
Even when data is extracted, it’s not standardized in a uniform view. Take YouTube and LinkedIn, for example. The former has “subscribers” whereas the latter has “followers.” Both are the same metric but these are traditionally looked at separately. Cost-per-mille (CPM) and cost-per-view (CPV) are other examples. Both track the cost of views, but each is calculated differently. With more channels and martech solutions than ever, it’s becoming harder to find simplistic methods for digital marketing data analysis across multiple channels.
Problem #3
Once a marketing team has standardized the data, presenting it in an actionable way continues to be a challenge. Digital marketing moves too fast for teams to struggle with attempting to interpret the findings so that they can iterate in real time. Think about ad auctions where it takes, at most, 300 milliseconds to complete an auction and where billions of auctions occur every hour. A data analytics for digital marketing strategy that takes weeks or months isn’t acceptable. This delay in visibility leads to wasted budget in campaigns, channels, and resources. Marketing leaders must have complete visibility and an easy way to automate data collection so they can iterate in real time to optimize results.
The CMO’s Formula To 3x Your Digital Marketing Campaign Results
As a marketing leader, you’re not alone in experiencing these problems. There’s a better way to solve these pain points, and it starts by reviewing our latest eBook, “The CMO’s Formula To 3x Your Digital Marketing Campaign Results.” Here’s what you’ll get inside:
- The 5 most pressing questions CMOs face
- The 5 digital marketing best practices for CMOs to adapt to the changing digital landscape
- Wrike’s tailor-made solution to view performance insights and provide instant visibility across 50 digital marketing channels to optimize investments
Access the eBook here, but don’t stop there because it’s only a primer to Wrike’s capabilities with digital marketing data and providing actionable insights. Try out Wrike Insights and see the difference for yourself — no more siloed teams or tracking results with spreadsheets.
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