When More Data Doesn’t Mean Better Decisions
Businesses can spend an enormous amount of time reporting numbers without getting much closer to understanding how their marketing is performing.
There’s endless data to review and discuss. Yet ask a more fundamental question — what are we actually learning from all of this, and what should we do differently as a result? — and suddenly, there are a lot of blank stares.
I’ve seen how easily measurement becomes an exercise in reporting what happened rather than understanding why it happened, whether it matters, what it means for the business, and what can be done about it.
Part of the problem is that marketing platforms make it easy to measure almost everything. And when a number is readily available, it’s tempting to assume it’s worth tracking.
But being able to measure something doesn’t automatically make it meaningful.
A report might show that website traffic has increased, a campaign has generated more leads or engagement has improved. What those numbers don’t necessarily tell you is whether the business is making progress towards its objectives, whether marketing is contributing as expected or where to focus next.
Those are different questions, and answering them requires more than a collection of data points.
The most useful insights often come from looking beyond the headline numbers and asking what they actually reveal. An increase in traffic, for example, might look encouraging until you discover it hasn’t led to more enquiries or meaningful engagement. The number itself hasn’t changed, but your understanding of what it means has.
Effective marketing measurement starts not with the numbers you can track, but with what you need to know.
Start With What the Business Needs to Achieve
One of the first things I look at is whether there is a clear connection between what the business is trying to achieve and what marketing is actually doing.
A business might want to grow revenue, enter a new market, improve customer retention or increase market share. Each objective has different implications for marketing priorities and how performance should be measured.
Yet it’s tempting to jump straight to the metrics. What’s our email open rate? What’s our cost per click? How many leads are we generating?
In my experience, teams can often tell me exactly what they’re tracking, but are less clear about how those measures connect to the outcomes the business is trying to achieve.
The starting point is to establish what the business wants to achieve, what marketing is expected to contribute and how progress will be assessed. That requires leadership and marketing to work together to translate business objectives into clear marketing objectives and relevant measures.
A performance-led approach to marketing builds measurement into the strategy from the outset, connecting business objectives with marketing priorities, activity and results.
Without that connection, even a comprehensive marketing report can leave the most important question unanswered: are we moving the business in the right direction?
Business Outcomes Aren’t the Same as Marketing Performance
A business might set revenue growth as the measure of success. It’s an important outcome, but it doesn’t necessarily tell the marketing team how well its activities are performing or what needs to change.
There are two related questions to answer: is marketing helping the business achieve the desired results, and how effectively is marketing performing the activities that contribute to those results?
For example, revenue might tell us whether the business is growing, but it won’t necessarily explain why a campaign is underperforming, which channels are delivering the best results or where the team should focus its efforts.
To answer those questions, marketing needs operational measures that provide more immediate insight into what’s working and what isn’t. These measures help the team identify problems, test improvements and make better decisions about where to invest its time and budget.
Marketing needs operational measures to understand what’s working, identify problems and improve its activities. The challenge is connecting those measures to business outcomes, so the team isn’t simply optimising its own metrics while losing sight of what the business needs to achieve.
When Marketing Is Held Accountable for What It Can’t Control
I recently worked with a client who decided that sales-qualified leads (SQLs) should be the single measure of marketing performance.
On the surface, it makes sense. Marketing generates leads, and the business wants to know how many turn into qualified sales opportunities. But there is a problem: marketing doesn’t control the entire process.
Once a lead is passed to sales, its progression depends on what happens next. Is the lead followed up promptly? Does it fall through the cracks? How effectively does the salesperson handle the call? Is the lead qualified consistently?
Marketing can influence the number of SQLs it generates, but the final result also depends on how sales handles those leads.
SQLs are still an important measure. But they reflect the combined performance of marketing and sales, not marketing alone. Using them as the sole measure of marketing effectiveness risks holding one team accountable for outcomes influenced by another.
It can also make it harder to identify the real problem. If SQL numbers fall, is marketing generating fewer suitable leads, or is something going wrong in the sales follow-up and qualification process? The headline number alone won’t tell you that.
This is why measures need to reflect responsibility and influence. Marketing needs to understand the quality of the leads it generates, while sales needs visibility into how effectively those leads are followed up and qualified. Shared outcomes matter, but each team also needs measures that help it understand its own performance.
Otherwise, a metric intended to create accountability can end up obscuring where the problem actually lies.
The Right Measures Depend on What You’re Trying to Understand
Even when you’re tracking the right metrics, the numbers need to be interpreted in context.
How does performance compare with previous periods? Are you meeting the targets you’ve set? Is a change significant, or is it simply a normal fluctuation? Without that context, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions or react to changes that don’t warrant action.
Comparing results over time, against targets and alongside related measures can reveal patterns that aren’t obvious from a single figure. It can also help identify where performance is improving, where it is falling short and where further investigation may be needed.
The aim isn’t to measure everything or create ever more elaborate reports. It’s to understand what the numbers are telling you, recognise when you need to look deeper, and avoid drawing conclusions without enough evidence.
Measurement Only Matters When It Informs a Decision
A report might identify a decline in conversion rates or show that one channel is outperforming another. But those findings only become useful when they help you decide whether something needs to change.
Sometimes the answer will be to adjust a campaign, redirect budget or rethink an approach. Other times, it might be to investigate further before making a decision. Not every movement in a metric demands an immediate response.
The important thing is to move beyond reporting numbers and start asking what they mean. Why has performance changed? What might be driving the result? What do we need to prioritise?
If those questions aren’t being asked, measurement can easily become a reporting exercise that produces plenty of information but very little improvement.
In When More Isn’t the Answer, I explored why disappointing results don’t automatically mean a business needs to do more marketing. Understanding what the numbers are telling you is part of deciding where effort can make the greatest difference.
The purpose isn’t to prove that marketing is busy or justify activity after the fact. It’s to understand performance well enough to decide what to continue, what to change and how to improve results.
Measure What Matters
Good marketing measurement isn’t about tracking more numbers. It’s about insights.
Start with knowing what you need to understand, choosing measures that provide meaningful insight, and using that insight to make better decisions.
When measurement is connected to business objectives and used to understand performance, it becomes more than a reporting exercise. It helps businesses see where marketing is making a difference, where it isn’t, and where effort needs to go next.
The real value of measurement isn’t in the numbers you report. It’s in the decisions they help you make.
As a Marketing Consultant, I can help connect your marketing performance to business goals and identify where to focus your efforts.