Disconnects on Metrics: Health vs. Optimization vs. Success Metrics

Marketers have become very focused on measuring the effects of their work—which is both good and bad. On the one hand, quantifying things can prove that certain strategies and tactics are effective and worth additional investment. On the other hand, we don’t always do a very good job at understanding the numbers our work produces, which means data may be driving us to the wrong conclusions.

For instance, most brands haven’t figured out attribution, and therefore don’t know the return on investment they’re getting. According to Salesforce’s 2014 State of Marketing Leadership report, 48% of senior-level marketers rate “quantifying marketing’s ROI” as a major challenge, second only to “budgetary constraints.” Without an attribution model and ROI visibility, it’s difficult to have a cohesive, holistic strategy.

Complicating this further is evidence that channel marketers aren’t using the same metrics to measure success that their leaders do. Our State of Marketing Leadership report indicated that revenue growth, return on investment, and conversion rates were the top 3 success metrics for senior marketers. Those are great, business-oriented, bottom-of-the-funnel metrics.

However, when we asked channel marketers the same question in our 2015 State of Marketing report, we got very different answers…

>> Read the entire post on the Convince & Convert blog