Why Most Marketing Reporting is Worthless

“There are lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics.” - Mark Twain

Data is data, and people are people. While the amount of data we have on people and their buying habits is greater than ever, people are still people. They are unpredictable, procrastinators, irrational, and jealous. They love, they hate, they scheme, they hope, and they dream.

Your agency emailed you this month’s reports, and your numbers look good. Your website traffic is up, your email opening is getting higher rates, and your remarketing clicks are high. Naturally, if sales are also up, they have all kinds of reports to prove it because of their efforts. Except as good as the reports look, and as much as you are a receptive audience to the good news, the reports are bogus.

It is bogus because the reports only tell a tiny fraction of the story. The report is just the tip of the iceberg in that website traffic, email, remarketing, or Facebook ads may have had little or nothing to do with the sale they have so diligently tracked back to a single action in a campaign. A campaign that may have involved hundreds of or even thousands of actions over the years. However, they and you naturally want to make the connection so that both of you can justify the relationship and the all-powerful ROI. The problem is most of the reports lead to bogus conclusions.