The 3 Biggest Marketing Reporting Blunders You're Making Right Now - And How to Solve Them

Any company that claims to have never made a marketing blunder is not to be trusted. In the infamous words of John C. Maxwell, "A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them." Marketing mistakes happen — and so do reporting blunders. How you adapt to, fix, and learn from your marketing reporting blunders is what matters.

Recognizing and Correcting the Top Three Marketing

Reporting Blunders

Blunder #1: Not Setting Proper Expectations with the C-Suite

The Problem: You’ve been consistently efficient with your spend in the past, but you’ve asked for a bigger budget and the rest of the C-Suite isn't planning on granting you the request.

The Solution: The above marketing blunder occurred because expectations weren't properly handled.

Oftentimes, the C-Suite is led to believe that all marketing channels will receive the same returns. This simply isn't the case. Marketing channels receive different return — which is why strategic marketing plans cover a multitude of channels. When you present marketing plans to your C-Suite Executives, make sure that you properly manage expectations for each channel by leveraging the following guidelines:

• Present the entire marketing plan cohesively.

• Clearly show the capacities of each channel.

• Discuss how each channel will perform.

• Determine the forecasted Return On Investment (ROI) for each channel.

• Show how each channel works both individually and as a cohesive unit within the overarching marketing plan.

Blunder #2: Not Integrating Systems as Often as Possible

The Problem: Your email marketing system doesn’t integrate with your referral marketing solution, which doesn’t integrate with your CRM. In short, systems are operating as inefficient silos. And that affects your ability to demonstrate your effectiveness.

The Solution: If your marketing efforts must have point solutions (i.e. silo systems), then you must make sure that those systems will share data. If the systems fail to share data, then you will fail to gain a 360 degree view of your entire marketing efforts. A more cohesive overview will afford you the opportunity to accurately analyze how all of your marketing tactics and campaigns are performing. These insights will help you to make informed marketing decisions on future campaigns and help you demonstrate the efficiency of your spend.

Blunder #3: Not Effectively Utilizing Metrics.

The Problem: You’re afraid of using hard metrics or using incorrect data to back up your outcomes. Perhaps you’re not connecting the dots accurately: "400,000 people opened our monthly email; this means that the marketing department has contributed to the company's bottom line," isn’t a factual statement.

The Solution: To illustrate how to use the correct metrics, let's revisit the aforementioned statement. 400,000 people opened the monthly email, which is a good starting metric. To use it properly, you will need to dig deeper into associated metrics. For example:

• 400,000 people opened our monthly email.

• 100,000 people clicked on the coupon link within our monthly email.

• 20,000 of those clicks led to assist conversions on our eCommerce site.

• These email conversions resulted in $10,000 in sales this month.

• The email marketing campaign cost $5,000 to produce.

By understanding the correct metrics you can draw the correct conclusions: $10,000 in sales were made from an email marketing campaign that cost $5,000 to produce. Analyzing the correct marketing metrics can help you to better understand the accurate ROI for your marketing efforts, which can lead to informed decisions and better future results.

Why Does it All Matter?

Recognizing the common marketing mistakes can help organizations resolve the internal blunders before they become too costly: not setting the proper expectations can result in a too-low marketing budget, failing to integrate the systems as often as possible can limit your insights into marketing results, and incorrectly analyzing marketing metrics can create misunderstandings and misrepresentations around your marketing ROI. Learning how to spot and resolve marketing blunders can help your organization improve marketing efforts, analysis, and ROI bolstering results.