Marketers' No. 1 Challenge: Measuring ROI Accurately

The digital revolution was supposed to bring precision to the monumental problem of marketing waste and inefficiency. But, business and consumer marketers aren't much closer now to a solution than they were in the days when retailer John Wanamaker declared, "Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half."

A recent survey of B2B marketers uncovered some stunning frustrations among B2B marketers:
Nearly all marketers surveyed (96 percent) said most of their digital advertising reaches people they didn't want to target.

• Nearly all marketers surveyed (96 percent) said most of their digital advertising reaches people they didn't want to target.

• 89 percent of marketers say they have not been able to optimize their digital marketing mix.

• 71 percent say their digital advertising programs don't meet their expectations.

• Measuring ROI accurately is the top challenge for B2B marketers, with 46 percent ranking it at No. 1.

• Lead quality (42 percent) and low lead volume (36 percent) are two other major challenges plaguing B2B marketers.

Although the March 2016 study by Wakefield Research surveyed B2B marketers, we at UPTRACS see many parallels for B2C marketers as well, especially with wasted ad spending.

You know, for example, that some of your marketing efforts will fall wide of the mark. For example, people aren't always precise about the terms they type into Google or Bing and end up clicking on paid ads that don't match their interests.

But, we were amazed to see nearly all marketers saying most of their spending was wasted. That's a lot of money – millions or even billions of dollars – down the drain.

When your advertising reaches a wide audience but doesn't deliver the results you want, you have problems with your media mix. That ties in directly to the quality of the leads you do generate.

Low-quality leads indicate inaccurate media placements. No wonder poor lead-generation performance is one of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers.

We also see these challenges as an attribution issue. If you can't attribute leads or sales accurately among your advertising outlets, you can't measure performance accurately.

All of these issues explain why we built UPTRACS: to take away the guesswork that leads to wasted time and money for advertising and marketing efforts.

It's also why we were not surprised to learn that reporting, analytics and attribution tools are highest on marketers' shopping lists this year (see our take on that topic in a future blog post).

Is ad waste, attribution or reporting frustrating for you, too? We'd be glad to show you how UPTRACS can help you pinpoint where you need to change up your strategy. We'll be happy to set up a no-obligation test drive of the UPTRACS platform, or just drop us a line at 855-287-8722.