Marketing Analytics: Biggest Challenges Marketers Face

Staff WritersAnalyticsCustomer Experience Management

By MTS Staff Writer On Oct 25, 2023

Marketing Analytics is the discipline of gathering, analyzing and interpreting the data that is related to marketing efforts and activities to make informed decisions to maximize the efficiency of marketing strategies. To understand how marketing efforts are performing, how customers are behaving and how various analytic tools are performing marketing analytics are substantial for B2B marketers.

It gives insights about the marketing performance, customer behavior and overall efficacy of the marketing campaigns. The goal of marketing analytics is to measure the impact of marketing initiatives, allocate the resources efficiently and optimize Return On Investment (ROI). Key components of marketing analytics are data collection, data analysis, data visualization, performance metrics and predictive analytics.

What Are Analytics and Dashboards?

Analytics dashboards are visual tools that give an organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and vital data a consolidated, real-time perspective. By displaying data in an understandable and interactive style, they are made to assist users in making data-driven decisions.

These dashboards often include a variety of widgets, charts, graphs, and tables that show data from many sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and web services. Users can alter the dashboard to concentrate on particular metrics and information pertinent to their jobs and duties.

Analytics dashboards offer several benefits:

Data visualization: Dashboards make it simpler for consumers to comprehend trends, patterns, and outliers by representing complex data with visual elements like charts and graphs.
Real-time Insights: A lot of dashboards are updated in real-time or very close to real-time, giving users access to the most recent information to make decisions more quickly.
Centralized Information: By combining data from several sources, dashboards eliminate the need to sort through numerous reports and systems.
Interactivity: Users can frequently dive down into specific details, filter information to examine data from various aspects, and engage with the data.
Performance tracking: Dashboards are useful for keeping track of how well different parts of a company are performing, from operations and finance to sales and marketing.
Goal Alignment: By giving a clear picture of progress towards goals, they aid in aligning teams and departments with organizational goals.

From business and finance to healthcare and education, analytics dashboards are widely used to provide users at all levels with actionable information, encourage data-driven decision-making, and enhance overall organizational performance.

Marketing Analytics is closely related to analytics dashboards:

Because analytics dashboards are tools for visualizing and presenting the data from marketing analytics, they have a strong connection to one another. Analytic dashboards are a user friendly tool that have an interface which displays key metrics and insights in real time.

These dashboards offer snapshots of the marketing performance and hence it helps B2B marketers and decision makers to evaluate the progress, determine the concerns and make timely alterations to their marketing strategies. The relationship between marketing analytics and analytics dashboards can be summarized as:

Data gathering and analysis are part of marketing analytics.
These dashboards are used by marketers to track marketing performance and gather information.
KPIs, analytics, and trends pertaining to various marketing channels, campaigns, and customer categories often appear on dashboards.
Analytics dashboards give the analyzed data a visual representation.
Marketers may use dashboards to optimize their marketing campaigns based on real-time data and make data-driven decisions.

In short, marketing analytics and analytics dashboards are interrelated components of the broader concept – “data driven marketing”. If you use the analytics dashboards effectively then it will enhance marketer’s ability to leverage marketing analytics insights for better decision making and getting improved marketing outcomes.

Why use analytics dashboards?

The adoption of analytics dashboards is recommended for a number of reasons. Analytics dashboards, for instance, can assist you in taking action based on available, current information Dashboards provide real-time data reporting, analysis, and presentation. On the basis of this recent, accurate data, analysts can take action. Because these dashboards are cloud-based, users may access them from any internet-capable device, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

They provide you with a panoramic picture of all analytics data: 41% of organizations, according to Salesforce, claim that their “current system can’t make sense of large volumes of data from different sources.” Dashboards, on the other hand, allow you to compile and arrange all of your pertinent data into a single, practical view.
Fostering Cross-Functional Collaboration Through Dashboard Sharing: Sharing the dashboard with many employees in your business enables cross-functional collaboration and unites everyone. On a dashboard, you may start a conversation about your analysis right next to the charts, or you can use Amplitude notebooks to offer more information and your study’ most important conclusions.

A team communication channel like Slack can be integrated with the dashboard, or you can name specific team members in your comments. Teams can discuss and refine their discoveries through this collaboration, which helps them create excellent products.

Who will use your analytics dashboard?

Everyone from production managers to executives in customer service use analytics dashboards. Their primary goal is to quickly review the metrics that are relevant to their individual tasks. However, these are used by the following:

1. CEOs, CMOs and other senior management personnel:

They employ management dashboards to generate insights from complex data and make strategic decisions. They are mostly interested in knowing who their clients are and how much money they are making now versus last year at this time. Data on overall revenue, average revenue per customer, customer lifetime value (CLV), the number of new customers, and customer acquisition cost (CAC) are all included in revenue dashboards that provide this information.

To improve overall marketing performance, CMOs and marketing executives should use marketing dashboards to track key marketing KPIs through data visualization. To set goals for the future and monitor the effectiveness of campaigns, they use data such as the cost of getting each lead, conversion rates, and more.

Use financial dashboards to gather data such as the operational costs (OPEX) ratio, gross profit margin, net profit margin, and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), CFOs and finance executives are advised. They receive a breakdown of all the money the business makes (and spends).

2. Sales Executives:

Sales executives should concentrate on high-level sales data including the volume of sales, sales revenue, most-popular goods, high-value clients, etc. using customer dashboards. This knowledge aids them in developing and putting into practice a successful sales plan to increase revenue and strategies.

3. Product Managers:

Product managers should evaluate their product’s performance using product analytics dashboards. To find out who is using the product, how engaged they are, and how much money the product is making, they combine acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and monetization information.

4. Marketers:

Marketers use marketing analytics dashboards to monitor metrics at both the top and bottom of the funnel, including conversions, traffic from various sources, the quantity and quality of leads, return on ad spend, content and campaign effectiveness, and more.

What a basic dashboard needs to contain?

Because it depends on the kind of dashboard being designed and its intended application, there is no one size fits all approach to what a fundamental dashboard should include. The following design concepts should be kept in mind when creating a dashboard, and the following questions should be used to determine what should be on it:

1. For what purpose is the dashboard being created?

The dashboard’s target audience must be determined. If you’re designing a marketing dashboard, for instance, your dashboard must have analytics such as conversion rates, campaign ROI, and more. You may create dashboards that fulfill the fundamental needs of their audiences by taking a human-centered design approach.

2. What questions should your dashboard answer?

To choose the reports to put on the dashboard, consider the queries your audience will have. What is the overall revenue from sales, for example, if the dashboard is being created for an ecommerce product manager? What product categories make up the majority of the overall revenue?

3. What is the data source?

Establishing that the data is coming from a trustworthy source must be done before any data is shown on your dashboard. Only reliable data should be on your dashboard. When it comes to data, primary sources are more trustworthy than secondary ones.

4. Does the dashboard tell a story?

When an analytics manager views their dashboard, it needs to read like a story. It should only contain reports that provide a clear, logical flow from top to bottom. By pooling together reports that tell a coherent story, you can extract more meaningful insights from your dashboard. Avoid unnecessary information and be minimalistic in your selection of what data is included in your dashboard.

5. Have you chosen the right type of data visualization?

A column chart or bar chart may be the most appropriate if you’re comparing values. A tree map might be appropriate if you’re trying to visualize hierarchies or relationships. Are percentages of a total being displayed? In that case, a pie chart might be best. Are you utilizing dates? A time series might perhaps be the best option.

By selecting the appropriate sort of visualization for your dashboard, you can make it easier for your audience to understand the data that is being given to them.

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6 Examples Of Analytics Dashboards:

A few examples of Analytics Dashboards are given below:

1. Product analytics dashboard

A product analytics dashboard assists product managers in evaluating the success of a product or feature by displaying specific key performance indicators (KPIs) related to product management. Some typical product management metrics include:

Acquisition Metrics: Metrics related to user acquisition, such as the number of paid subscribers, 3-month active users, or page/ad impressions.
Activation Metrics: Metrics that measure user activation, like the percentage of activated users and the total number of activations.
Engagement Metrics: Metrics assessing user engagement, including average daily active users, time spent on the site or app, pages viewed, sessions per user, and metrics related to shopping cart or checkout abandonment.
Retention Metrics: Metrics related to user retention, including churn rate, retention rate, or N-day retention.
Monetization Metrics: Metrics concerning product monetization, such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per daily active user, customer lifetime value, and cost per acquisition.

Here is a sample Amplitude product analytics dashboard that can be used to track and examine these KPIs.

Product managers can perform cohort analysis or segmentation using product analytics dashboards. Both analyses are performed on user groups that have similar traits, such as those who access the product via mobile devices versus those who access the product via laptops. Product managers can concentrate on the segments or cohorts that matter by using data comparisons between user groups to put things into perspective.

2. Web Analytics dashboard

A custom web analytics dashboard consolidates essential metrics related to your website’s traffic, providing a comprehensive view of key performance indicators (KPIs). This personalized dashboard presents data on:

Page views, bounce rate, and pages per session.
Achievement of goals, such as form submissions, lead generation, or sales conversions.
Performance breakdown by traffic channels and sources.
Session statistics for your website or landing pages, encompassing bounce rates and conversion rates.
Information regarding the user’s browser or device.
Insights into campaign performance, including costs and return on investment (ROI).

By accessing these KPIs through a web dashboard, you can conduct a thorough analysis to identify successful strategies and areas that may require improvement. This empowers you to discontinue ineffective marketing efforts while scaling up those that yield positive results.

3. Digital marketing dashboard

You may monitor the outcomes of each of your digital marketing efforts using this dashboard. On a single dashboard, you can view data on the volume of organic search traffic, PPC metrics, the effectiveness of your email campaigns, and even social media metrics. KPIs in this dashboard include:

Cost-per-click, click-through rate, and conversion rate information for a campaign
Bounce rates can be used to determine how long visitors stay on your website before leaving.
Performance of traffic sources (search engines, social media, paid advertisements, etc.)
Conversion rates (sales, subscriptions to email newsletters, etc.)

This dashboard provides you with a bird’s-eye view of your whole marketing funnel so you can determine what is and is not working.

4. SEO dashboard

Page views, bounce rate, and pages per session.
Achievement of goals, such as form submissions, lead generation, or sales conversions.
Performance breakdown by traffic channels and sources.
Session statistics for your website or landing pages, encompassing bounce rates and conversion rates.
Information regarding the user’s browser or device.
Insights into campaign performance, including costs and return on investment (ROI).

5. Ecommerce dashboard

When you operate a website for selling products or services, an ecommerce dashboard becomes a valuable tool for providing comprehensive insights into every aspect of your sales process. This dashboard encompasses key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:

The number of ecommerce transactions and trends in ecommerce activity.
The total revenue generated from ecommerce sales.
Detailed sales data for each product, including the exact quantity sold and the revenue generated by each product.
Conversion rates for products based on different marketing channels.

The purpose of this ecommerce dashboard is to offer a holistic view of your ecommerce data, enabling you to identify the most successful products, pinpoint the traffic sources that contribute most to your sales, and determine which marketing channels are the most effective at converting customers. Armed with this knowledge, you can then amplify your successful ecommerce campaigns to drive increased revenue.

6. Social media dashboard

The utilization of this dashboard allows for the monitoring of essential social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This social media reporting dashboard encompasses KPIs that include:

The count of likes and followers.
The number of impressions, which assess the reach of your content.
Metrics related to social engagement, including shares, comments, and clicks.
Insights into the most popular posts, analyzing social engagement metrics on a per-post basis.

Given that each social platform has its unique reporting methods, manually tracking this data across multiple social media platforms can be quite a labor-intensive task. Consolidating all this information into a single dashboard significantly simplifies the process of determining which social media sites are providing the best return on your investment.

Biggest Challenges Marketers Face When Setting Up Analytics Dashboards & Why These Dashboards Fail?

Setting up Analytics dashboards is ideal for modern marketing efforts but these bring fai amount of challenges to the table. Some of the biggest challenges which marketers face are with the setting up of analytics dashboards.

Data integration and data accuracy: Marketers often have to deal with data from various sources and this data is arrived from email campaigns, social media platforms, etc. Integrating this data in a unified dashboard can be time consuming and challenging. Moreover, whether the data collected and displayed is accurate or not is another challenge. If the data is inaccurate, it can lead to incorrect insights and decisions.
Choosing the right metrics: Choosing the most relevant metrics that aligns with the marketing goals is a tricky thing to do and marketers have to filter this through a pool of data and finding what truly matters is not an easy feat.
Customizing: Every business and marketing campaign is unique so creating dashboards that are customizable to reflect these differences is challenging but it is essential for getting meaningful insights.
Real time data: Many marketers need real time data to make quick decisions and setting up dashboards to provide up to the minute information can be demanding technically.
Data Security: As the data is sensitive because customer data is being handled here then securing the data and compliance and adhering.
Dashboard Usability: Creating user friendly dashboards that are easily understandable by all the team members regardless of their technical expertise is a significant challenge.

Apart from these there are a few more challenges. Implementing advanced analytics dashboards is expensive especially for small businesses. Then getting the entire team on board who can use the dashboards is also challenging so training and promoting the employees need ongoing efforts.

Dashboards need to be responsive as more mobile devices are introduced in the market so analytics dashboards must be responsive and usable on various screen sizes and its another big challenge. Overcoming these challenges require technical expertise, data management skills and a good understanding of marketing objectives.

The dashboards fail because of the following reasons:

1. The Problem of Stale Data

Imagine you’ve spent time and money on a beautiful dashboard, but by the time your audience sees it, the information is out of date. It’s a frequent error that makes dashboards useless. Fresh, real-time data from analytics should enable quick action. Without it, your dashboard ceases to be a tool for making educated decisions and instead becomes a relic of the past.

2. The Integrity Test

The foundation of analytics trust is transparency. Trust is damaged if your audience is unable to identify the sources of the data or traverse it on their own. Viewers should be able to investigate and comprehend the sources of your data through an excellent dashboard, which functions like a transparent window into your data cosmos. If there is no openness, your audience can doubt the validity of your research.

3. One size does not fit all

When it comes to data, each member of your team has specific requirements. A pre-built dashboard might not be able to accommodate these many needs, giving your audience only a fragmentary understanding. Flexibility is essential. Data should be filtered and customized in dashboards to provide in-depth, position-specific perspectives. Keep in mind that a customized view yields more insightful results.

4. Speed is a must

Speed is crucial in the hectic world of marketing. Marketers are always coming up with new ideas and trying out different technology, channels, and tactics. If the deployment of your analytics project takes months, it could become dated. The answer is to be agile. Adopt strategies that enable rapid deployment and development to stay up with your sector’s rapid change.

The Path Ahead

Follow the best practices listed in this whitepaper to overcome these obstacles and make the most of your analytics dashboards. These tactics will not only give marketing teams a deeper comprehension of the marketing funnel, but they will also highlight areas that might use improvement. With new, open, and adaptable dashboards at your disposal, your marketing initiatives will succeed in a constantly competitive environment.

5 Best Practices to keep in Mind when setting Up Analytics Dashboards:

Creating efficient analytics dashboards is essential for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) and making data-driven choices. Take into account these five recommended practices to guarantee your dashboards provide insightful information and encourage wise decision-making:

Clearly define your goals: Prior to beginning the dashboard building process, clearly define your goals and the queries you hope to address. Recognize the objectives of your analytics endeavor and the users of the dashboard. The choice of pertinent metrics and visualizations will be influenced by well defined objectives.
Choose Metrics that Are Relevant: Decide on measurements that are consistent with your goals and KPIs. By concentrating on the most important signs, you may avoid data overload. Prioritize metrics that offer useful information and aid in your decision-making. Remember that less is frequently more when it comes to dashboard metrics.
Design for Usability: The user experience is crucial. Design a user-friendly and straightforward dashboard layout. Data should be organized logically, labels should be brief, and visuals should be simple to understand. Include filtering and drill-down features to let consumers study data at various granularities.
Assure Real-Time or Regular Updates: Making decisions based on outdated information might be detrimental. Create dashboards that show regular updates or real-time data whenever possible. Timeliness is essential, especially in sectors where circumstances change quickly.
Implement Data Security and Access Controls: By putting strong security measures in place, you can safeguard sensitive data and ensure data privacy. To ensure that only authorized users may view or interact with particular dashboard components, define access restrictions. This is crucial when dashboards are shared throughout teams or organizations.

You may build analytics dashboards that enable your team to successfully and efficiently make data-driven choices by adhering to these best practices. Remember that creating a dashboard is an iterative process, and periodically solicit user feedback to improve your dashboards over time.

How MOps Teams Can Enable Better Marketing Analytics Practices?

In order to improve marketing analytics techniques within firms, Marketing Operations (MOps) teams are essential. The efficiency of processes, the use of technology, and collaboration are ways that MOps teams can improve the efficacy of marketing analytics. Here are some tactics MOps teams can use to do this:

Data Management and Integration: MOps teams should make sure that data is combined into a single repository from various marketing systems and channels. This makes it possible to view marketing performance uniformly. Use data hygiene procedures to preserve the consistency and accuracy of your data.
Technology Stack Optimization: Check that the marketing technology stack is optimized and capable of supporting thorough analytics. Find tools that can successfully collect, analyze, and visualize data. For seamless data flow, integrate analytics platforms with other marketing tools.
Standardized Metrics and KPIs: Work with the marketing teams to establish standardized measurements and key performance indicators (KPIs) that support corporate objectives. This guarantees that success is measured uniformly across the board and establishes a foundation for insightful analysis.
Automated Reporting and Dashboards: Develop interactive dashboards and automated reporting systems that offer real-time insights into marketing performance. Teams working on MOPS can schedule routine reports and updates using tools, which will save them time and effort.
Data Governance and Compliance: Create data governance guidelines to guarantee data security, legal compliance (such as GDPR), and moral data usage. To reduce risks, MOps teams should work with the legal and compliance departments.
Training and skill development: Provide marketing staff with training courses on how to use analytics technologies efficiently. improve their analytical and data literacy abilities so they can gain useful insights from data.
Communication and collaboration: Encourage cooperation and communication between the marketing, IT, and MOps teams. In order to address data-related challenges, communicate insights, and align on analytics goals, effective communication channels should be set up.
Performance Optimization: Monitoring ongoing marketing campaigns and activities is essential for performance optimization. Analyze data to find areas that can be optimized and improved. Teams from MOps can work with marketers to create data-driven changes.
Testing and Experimentation: Promote an experimental and A/B testing culture within marketing teams. Refine strategy and tactics based on data-driven insights by analyzing test results.
Feedback Loops: Establish feedback loops where marketing teams can offer suggestions on the data and analytics needs. This guarantees that MOps teams are providing the information and analysis needed for sensible decision-making.

Finally, MOps teams play a crucial role in supporting improved marketing analytics practices by streamlining data processes, making the best use of technology, and encouraging a culture that values data. In order to fully utilize the potential of their marketing data for increased performance and ROI, MOps teams can assist firms by working closely with marketing and other pertinent departments.

Final Thoughts:

Although data is the foundation of marketing operations, its value depends on how well it is analyzed. Marketing Analytics dashboards fill this need by serving as a central hub that collects data and enables more rapid, well-informed decision-making. An essential component of most marketers’ toolkits is marketing analytics.

Its ability to provide marketers with data-driven plans and improve their understanding of consumer behavior is what makes it effective. To analyze the effectiveness of campaigns, understand consumer behavior, and make well-informed decisions, marketers rely on a huge array of data. But because there is so much data available, it can be difficult to glean insights that can be put to use.

Analytics dashboards are useful in this situation. They are priceless resources that assist marketers in streamlining data analysis, gaining deeper understanding, and generating more successful marketing plans. Marketers can track the progress of campaigns and customer interactions in real time because of analytics dashboards, which offer the most recent data. But, following best practices, understanding the challenges and finding the best solution is the key to making most of these Analytics dashboards.

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