How do you track the effectiveness of your marketing activities and ensure the reporting is actionable and accurate?

There are entire industries built around this question. I wish I could say my fondest wishes have been answered by any solution out there. Honestly this is another place I'm hopeful for the promise of AI. It should be possible to feed ALL of my data from all of my sources to a single entity and have it make all of the connections then answer my plain English questions. I'll most likely get more than a few companies reaching out to me saying they have exactly this solution, but I've yet to have this be true. Part of this isn't their fault, privacy concerns have made it nearly impossible to connect a lot of data, so even the machine can't do it and if it could it would probably be running afoul of some law. I do think there's a solution in the future, that both protects individual privacy and allows marketers to make sure they understand the ROI of their spend across channels, campaigns, creative, and audiences.

So, the answer I'll give for now is; start with what you can measure and work your way down. In the early days get traffic. From there form fills, add to cars, purchases or signups. Track conversions using simple methods like thank-you page views. Utilize UTMs or other tracking mechanisms and capture them into your CRM or back end data warehouse. Then little by little connect the dots deeper and deeper until you get to lifetime value.

I'd also say to not stop continuously learning. It is very easy to have a campaign launch with amazing top of funnel metrics, high signups or high purchases, but then find something downstream that tells you that the quality of these customers is so low that the campaign is not an ROI driver. I constantly question data, when I think I'm certain I actively work to disprove myself. As one co-worker put it I'm a "data monster" ... but I want to know, I need to know. The trick is, do not let not being certain stop you from doing what you need to do. Make decisions with the best data you've got, then validate your decision and evaluate your data. If you learn something that changes your direction that's ok, you still did what you thought was right for the business. It's all any of us can do, and it's better than analysis paralysis.

The first step to tracking the effectiveness of your marketing activities is to have an inventory of what is available from a tracking perspective and determine the necessary infrastructure that needs to be set up. Ideally, this setup should be done before any budget is spent. Why? Because this critical step ensures the accuracy of reporting; otherwise, you may make decisions based on inaccurate data and reporting.

Once the infrastructure is in place, consider the following to ensure actionable and accurate reporting:

• Define clear goals: What business outcomes are you trying to achieve with the marketing activity?

• Define the source of truth: Which BI or analytics tool will be used to visualize performance?

• Define tracking mechanisms: Have you set up UTMs, conversion tracking, and other forms of tracking?

• Define attribution: How many platforms are you using, and do you need to standardize how attribution is defined?

Additionally, it's important to take continuous optimization into consideration while analyzing data and defining A/B tests. Lastly, effective communication is key. Stay ahead of reporting and communicate outcomes to your stakeholders promptly.