Marketing Research Chart: Improper metrics set-up presents challenge to tracking key optimization metrics

by Meghan Lockwood, Research Analyst

Marketing Research Chart: More than half of corporate marketers have not properly set up their LPO metrics

Q. Are there metrics you are not monitoring only because they are not set up properly?



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People leave digital footprints that mark their online path. Deployed correctly, data analysis allows marketers to harness this unprecedented consumer insight, and to use this material to design a website that exactly addresses the needs of their ideal client.

Online marketing has a unique advantage over other departments. Digital marketers don’t need to try and guess what their ideal prospects want using intuition or focus groups. The revolution of website marketing lies in the fact that everything that a visitor does online -- from their actual purchases to browsing history and social media engagement, to their ZIP code and even the operating system on the computer they’re using -- can be tracked.

While the analytical reasons for tracking certain metrics are important, they are not always determinant of what is actually tracked. Approximately half of all marketers responded they do not track certain metrics only because the technology piece is broken.

This chart shows that in-house marketers are more likely to have to deal with poorly installed Web analytics platforms. Agencies and consultants, often themselves providing Web analytics installation services, are more likely to have the measurement issues under control, and perhaps are also more likely held directly accountable for them.

As Web analytics software providers are striving to make their products as IT-independent as possible, marketers may find that with only a small amount of training, they could deploy tracking without outside help. This is likely less encouraging for enterprise-level websites, where all changes to the websites -- no matter how small -- must go through a lengthy approval process.

For additional research data and insights about landing page optimization, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report.

Useful links related to this research

2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report

Marketing Research Chart: Top behavioral metrics for landing page optimization

Social Media Marketing: Analytics are free and plentiful, so use them

Test Plan: Build better marketing tests with the Metrics Pyramid