In the digital age, you’ve likely heard all the benefits of marketing analytics. That said, it’s critical to understand that, while integral to the process, there are limitations to marketing analytics.
So let’s take a look at some of the blind spots in marketing analytics, and how you can compensate for these weaknesses.
Blind Spot 1: Analytics specific to a single platform
When monitoring analytics, you may find that you only have a narrow view of activity on a single platform. Although this can be augmented with some other platform-specific analytics for other channels, you won’t be able to see cross-platform audience behavior and interaction.
To avoid this blind spot, you can take advantage of a social listening tool that monitors all of your target audience’s online communities. Instead of giving you a single platform breakdown, a social listening tool will give you a 360-degree view across different channels, sources and markets.
Blind spot 2: What devices are customers using
Did you know that, according to Google, 93% of those who use their phone to search for a product will go on to make the purchase? Despite this, many marketing analytics tools won’t tell you how conversion rates vary across devices.
With this statistic in mind, it’s important to keep track of the device your audience is using to interact with your brand or product, allowing you to better guide consumers through the sales funnel.
Blind Spot 3: Differentiating between external and internal traffic
When measuring traffic to your site, analytics likely won’t differentiate between consumers visiting your site and internal staff or content writers doing their own research. This means that your traffic data may be inflated.
To mitigate this, it may be useful to filter any traffic coming from employees or external companies using the IP addresses.
Blind Spot 4: Offline Marketing
While it may be easy to use analytics for online marketing efforts, it’s a different story for offline marketing. That said, it’s important to track how effective offline marketing campaigns are for your business and measure how consumers are transitioning between the online and offline worlds.
One way to uncover this blind spot is by including things like QR codes or promo codes in your offline marketing campaigns. When used, they can be tracked and counted, providing meaningful insights.
Blind spot 5: Consumer expectations
Analytics can provide you with insights into the behaviors, wants and needs of your target audience. However, what it won’t tell you is what consumers expect from your product, service or brand itself.
You can easily accomplish all of your marketing objectives, only to have it fail. Why? Customers have a preconceived idea of what your brand can offer. Therefore, it is important to understand exactly what the audience expects from your brand, so that you are not disappointed.
Blind Spot 6: Post-Conversion Insights
And finally, marketing analytics deals with the past and the present, collecting and analyzing data to highlight trends and commonalities and measure the success of an existing campaign that can be used for future improvements.
To track customer engagement and behavior after conversion, it’s important to foster a lasting relationship, encouraging them to fill out feedback forms, surveys and reviews for long-term insights.
