Marketing Execs Struggle to Show ROI
Really? Data availability and integrity is the number one barrier to showing ROI? Technology and infrastructure is number two? This is shocking! When so much great information is available, when web analytics and website optimization tools are FREE, this is very hard to believe. Is it possible that the survey results are dead wrong? That the issue is a lack of people who understand the data or know what to do with it?
One big gap that companies struggle with is inter-channel results, meaning, someone goes online to research a product, then finalizes the purchase in the bricks-and-mortar store. But hasn't it always been the case that retail purchases could not typically be attributed to a particular broad-market advertising activity? That may be a part of the ROI of the site, but you have to get creative about what you are capturing. You may not always be able to capture the sale itself, but if you can at least capture the fact that the visitor achieved their purpose on your site, that is one type of ROI that is also important.
