The Danger of Misinterpreting Marketing Data

It’s no secret that a lot of businesses are pivoting to try and make marketing data-driven. Even though this term’s been bandied around for years, it seems like there’s been a shift at the top and marketing leaders are now hunting down ROI to start showcasing the value of marketing as a whole. What hasn’t changed, however, is teams who are relying on the data provided in GA4 as a main source of marketing truth and influence of strategy. These two ideas a year or two ago wouldn’t have been odd. But today they are. We’re in a very different world and digital marketing has changed considerably. It’s worth remembering that Google Analytics and the data we have at our fingertips can be questionable at best, dangerous at worst.

I wrote a blog a few months ago about the move away from the concept of direct attribution and instead made a case for marketing influence, and I stand by this view. This is the idea that a lot of activity cannot be tracked all the way through a single customer’s journey. It just can’t, no matter how many multi-million dollar pieces of tech you have. What you can do is show the impact of marketing in terms of influence on accounts or campaigns, and tie that back to revenue. It’s all about going back to the days of baselines, testing and uplifts.

In this new world it’s critical that marketing leaders start to manage upwards. The time has come where marketing has a big spotlight on it and leaders are asking for ROI metrics. This is great! But remember that how you respond to this request is up to you, and I’d highly recommend that you don’t back yourself into a direct attribution corner.

So what’s the problem with direct attribution? To name a few, here’s why it’s near impossible:

Regulation

GDPR has been around for a while now but there have also been a number of updates, with the most recent being to the Digital Markets Act that resulted in Google’s Consent Mode - the requirement to receive consent before dropping cookies on a device.

Third party cookies are harder than ever to track thanks to regulation (great for a consumer, not so much for marketers) and receiving consent for first party tracking is not guaranteed. Browsers are also allowing users to block them automatically.

Ad blockers

Fun fact, they don’t just block ads, they can also block tracking. That means losing precious traffic or click data in your campaigns.

Devices

Who doesn’t use multiple devices nowadays? Whether you’re browsing at home, at work, on your laptop, through Alexa or something else, keeping track of who’s who and what the buying journey is is almost impossible.

Dark social

Social sites want to keep users there, so they reduce your reach if you’re posting links and can choose to strip your tracking, which means it’ll show as direct or organic in GA4.

Zero clicks

Another change in how we find and consume data, which is great for us as consumers, but not for businesses: searching for an answer and taking the response in Google as gospel - no need to click, no need to read an article, just read the snippet and move on.

All of these changes mean that investing heavily in a direct attribution model can give you more headaches than answers, especially if you’ve got a complex sales cycle or multiple decision makers.

Just picture a buying cycle - in today’s multi-channel, multi-device world a typical journey could see you engaging with content across search, social, email, and forums in the space of several months. If you’re in B2C then you can cut this down to weeks, but the channels will be just as plentiful. Add in the removal or blocking of tracking plus zero click marketing (formally talked about as “position zero”), then your attribution data’s going to be next to useless. It also means that when people eventually get to your site they’ll show as a direct or organic traffic source. And, if they’ve already done their research beforehand, they’ll convert as one. But it isn’t accurate and you shouldn’t be discounting your other channels.

This is where the critical importance of your commercial narrative comes in. You need to be able to explain to senior leaders and the board that:

Certain social or tech sites (e.g. Slack) discourage linking externally and some will remove tracking, meaning a lot of your traffic will show as direct.
Brand and educational content will be consumed by buyers before they commit to purchase, and it may not be owned by you.
Most buyers will only buy/enquire once they have enough information, and it’s likely they’ll come directly to you via a Google search, but that does not mean it’s the most effective channel.

So how do you solve and build this narrative, whilst still answering the question “what’s our ROI?”

There are a couple of ways:

Move senior leaders away from singular platform metrics. If most of your results are going to come from Google then you’re going to be painting a biassed picture and doing your social teams a disservice. Marketing should be holistic and long term, which means in one 6 month campaign there could be 5-10 different channels. Trying to state which singular channel is the source of attribution is wasted effort, it’s everything combined that’s important - and that’s the message.

Focus on your quarterly or yearly performance. Similarly to channels, if you know your buying cycles are 6 months, 12 months or longer, don’t expect to get results after 1 month, and I’d even argue that you should only be reporting on campaigns once they’ve had time to settle in. You could decide that it's quarterly, twice a year or yearly - whatever fits your cycle. But show your data too early and you can lose wider belief in the long term plan.
Testing needs to be a priority. Whilst direct attribution and specific channel reporting might be near impossible, it doesn’t mean you can’t work through what works. Testing, testing and more testing is the way to go. What happens if you remove events from your next campaign? What if one specific industry didn’t receive remarketing? What if you only choose one channel for the whole of Scotland? Whatever your assumptions are, make them, test them and figure out how you build out the story.
Don’t be afraid to turn things off. This is something I’ve spoken about internally for years, but have only ever encountered one boss who was brave enough to try it. What would happen if you turned everything (paid) off? Would those people who have already researched still find you? Are Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn targeting people who already know about you and would have bought anyway? There’s only one way to find out.
Ensure the CFO is on board with your metrics. An absolute must. Whilst sales need to be your best friends, the CFO needs to be that parent that you keep on side. Work with them to build out the metrics that are important to them and the business and report back on them. Don’t be afraid to push back and set boundaries of what’s relevant to them. Channel decisions and activities are marketing’s remit but the quarterly/yearly results are the CFO’s so make sure they’re bought in and know the timelines.

All of these things are different to how we’ve been trained as marketers and a lot of people get nervous at the fact that there’s no definitive answer for channels or campaigns. But building a story about marketing influence and impact, knowing what happens when you turn things off, where to spend your money, and being able to say that for every £1 you spend you’ll deliver £x each year is a huge win. It’s in no way simple, but that’s your next challenge.

Need help with trying to solve some of these challenges? Get in touch.