Marketers Surveyed to Find Trends in Reporting and Attribution

Reporting is the best way for marketers to better understand what is and isn’t working so they can optimise their efforts. But what channels, metrics and conversions are they using, and which of those do they struggle to track?

In early 2021, we surveyed over 200 businesses to learn more about how they’re currently reporting and attributing their marketing efforts.

Keep reading to find out some of what we learned. Or dive right in and download the report here.

Marketing Channels

Marketers were found to use as many as 13 different channels when it comes to disseminating their content.

90% of marketers surveyed stated they used web and blog content in their marketing channels. Perhaps surprisingly, 33% of those struggled to track blog content.

Meanwhile, just 14% of marketers stated that they used TV or radio in their marketing strategy, but 100% of them struggled to track its effectiveness.

Perhaps the problem for these marketers was a lack of attribution, with 42% stating they did not use an attribution tool to measure their marketing.

Marketing Conversions

Conversions are a key method used by marketers to generate sales-ready leads from their website.

Unsurprisingly, 84% of marketers use form submissions on their website to generate leads. This was by both direct call to actions as well as through gated content forms.

Meanwhile, 50% of marketers stated they used inbound calls while just over 33% use live chat.

Of those who use forms, 36% struggle to track conversions. Meanwhile, a staggering 62% of marketers using phone numbers to drive leads, struggled to track inbound calls. 53% of marketers using live chat struggled to measure conversions,

Marketing Metrics

We asked marketers about 15 different key marketing metrics that tend to crop up in reporting. Conversions came up as the most commonly tracked metrics, with 81% of marketers stating they measure this in regular reports.

Other key metrics which proved popular were clicks, impressions, CPL and revenue.

However, marketers seemed to struggle with aspects of their metric tracking. 28% of those measuring CPA struggled to track it.

Just 10% of marketers stated revenue was difficult to measure, despite 42% saying they did not use attribution tools.

Meanwhile, just 9% of marketers stated they struggled to track conversions. However, we know that up to 62% of marketers using phone calls struggled to track inbound calls. So this raised questions around what marketers counted as lead and conversion tracking.

What Does this Mean for Marketers?

There’s a data disconnect.

Leads and conversions should be tracked as part of a full customer journey. From our survey, it seems that marketers view them as individual actions. And we can’t blame them. With so many channels, so many conversion types and so many metrics, it’s a lot to keep track of.

But differentiating leads and conversions by channel, by campaign and even by keyword is a vital skill to have.

It allows marketers to fully understand how their work is driving new leads and sales. And, when broken down by campaign and channel, they can see which works best and optimise to that.