There are certain truths about marketing, particularly digital marketing, that most everyone agrees with. Quality lead generation is better than a quantity of web page views. Good content marketing is consistent. People don’t want to feel like they’re listening to a sales pitch when they read blog articles. Data analytics are the key to getting the best return on your marketing investment.

Up to a quarter of marketing databases could have errors

This last assertion, accepted for several years now by digital marketers everywhere, has recently been called into question by an article posted to VentureBeat.com, a leading news source for technological innovation. Manji Matharu, the president of analytics at Infogiz, a data integrity and analytics organization, wrote that “between 10 and 25 percent of B2B marketing databases have errors and are ‘dirty.’”

Since statistical company Sirius Decisions estimates companies “spend \$100 per inaccurate data record on things like poor lead generation and sending direct-mail marketing to the wrong addresses,” we’re looking at some impressive amounts of money being wasted based on the suggestions of analytics.

Too many tools in the toolbox

Part of the problem is in companies with a large marketing team, there are sometimes upwards of 100 different analytics programs being used by various team members to up their ROI. Since each program works a little differently and each marketer might input data with slightly different interpretation, worries about accuracy and information quality are bound to crop up.

Stewart Rogers, a VentureBeat analyst, wrote in the 2014 State of Marketing report, “Many [marketers] are not only bringing their own devices to work, but are also bringing their own marketing processes and toolsets.” He said this leads to concern over “the future of accuracy and cleanliness of a company’s central record of customer data, not to mention a lack of documented . . . . processes right across the entire organization.”

Start the conversation

What’s the answer to the analytics dilemma? Getting rid of analytics altogether doesn’t seem waste, as it has been found to “free anywhere between 15 and 20 percent of marketing spending,” according to McKinsey & Company. But there’s no question that companies who spread their resources too thin over too many different analytics programs that don’t communicate with each other is the wrong strategy, as well.

Matharu’s suggestion is that marketers develop a conversation about analytics tools and how to improve data management systems. He admits the answer likely won’t come quickly, but when enough people care about the problem, they’re more likely to find a solution to the problem.

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Source:

venturebeat.com/2015/03/17/are-cmos-wasting-money-on-faulty-marketing-analytics/

Tags: marketing analytics, digital marketing, lead generation, good content, content marketing, sales pitch, data, marketers, using analytics, analytics accuracy