For as much progress as we (digital marketers) have made over the past 15+ years with respect to earning our seat at the marketing budget table, we still face adversity when the results are incomplete, particularly in industries where traditional media is the longstanding norm, regardless of whether those channels are measurable and whether they actually work or not.
The fact is that old habits are hard to break and the digital landscape remains uncomfortable for a lot of folks, particularly when it’s not clear-cut as to what the SEO, SEM, Social, etc. results look like.
Most of the time today where we’re seeing organizations still having difficulties attributing revenue accurately is they are either not effectively closing the loop on their sales process (ex. phone calls not being counted toward digital lead generation efforts by using unique phone numbers) or there are circumstances whereby some type of third party website is involved to finalize a transaction, application, etc. on a different url and analytics is not “seeing” the transaction.
Whatever the obstacle, until it’s resolved there will be opportunities for people to downgrade the results that the digital marketing efforts are delivering and limit (or eliminate) funding. Thus, it’s critical to pinpoint and fix whatever shortcomings your data may have. If your internal team has the ability, but hasn’t found the time, then it’s essential that this initiative be bumped higher on the priority list. If the internal team has been trying to resolve the issue but hasn’t been successful, then its likely time to bring in some external expertise who will have, in all likelihood, successfully tackled similar situations in the past.
