Revised February 25, 2021
Revised October 1, 2020
Revised May 8, 2019
While chief marketing officers are under increasing pressure to quantitatively demonstrate the ROI of marketing investments, most still struggle with it. Yet as pointed out on Marketing Charts, “What’s interesting to see is that CMOs don’t seem to be pursuing what’s being touted as the solution to the ROI struggle: marketing analytics.”
Analytics tools can ultimately help measure ROI. But more importantly, they can provide more granular detail on what’s working and what’s not, helping marketers make smart decisions about what to do more of, less of, differently, or not all, and even what to try next. ROI is a financial metric, and vital at a high level to show value to the business. But web analytics tools ideally provide marketers with actionable information.
Put another way, it’s great to be able to demonstrate a positive ROI from content marketing; it’s more essential, particularly at the director level and below, to understand why, in order to continually optimize strategies and tactics.