Why Measuring Marketing is So Challenging (and How to Make It Easier)
It frustrates me when I hear people say that marketers don’t want to get serious about results.
Because I know that isn’t true. Most of us want data to inform what we do and make what we do better.
But tracking ROI can be difficult and often feels like trying to pan for gold with a leaky bucket.
Thanks to the invention of the tracking pixel and digital attribution tools, marketers are being told to “prove our value” more than ever. And we’re expected to be able to do that with exact accuracy.
But there’s one question that I keep coming back to over and over again in my mind, and that is —
Marketing is not a new field…
I’m not the first marketer to exist.
So….why is this so hard?
Why does it feel like no one has figured out a unified theory of marketing measurement yet?
I realize there might be big marketing teams with huge budgets that don’t feel this pain. They might have the budget for sophisticated measurement tools: MMM, incremental testing, causal analytics.
Or there might be marketing teams that have it simple: they only need to track a single form that leads to a conversion.
But for others, for us small to mid-sized teams, with long, complex B2B sales cycles, the struggle with measurement is very real.
We’ve got the out-of-the-box analytics tools coming out of our ears.
But a 2017 CMO survey showed 60.8% of CMOs aren’t fully utilizing their analytics.
Why aren't more marketing teams actually using all the data they collect?
I'll tell you why – there's a big huge gap between all the data hype and what companies are actually doing to support the gathering of the data they are asking for.
We need to start asking ourselves two critical questions:
What's actually important to measure? (And do we even know how to measure it?)
Are we investing the time, people, and resources to measure what we claim is important?
Is Everything in Marketing Measurable?
Some metrics are straightforward. At the bottom of the funnel, like sales and conversions. Someone clicks a link, buys something, and boom: tools like Google Analytics give you that clarity.
But as you move up the funnel, its more murky.
Think of tracking website visitors. Imagine people walking by your store, or coming in, looking around, and leaving. You can’t always tell who they are or what they’re interested in. Some might peek through the window or avoid being seen. Privacy settings, cookie blockers, and lost referral UTMs cloud the picture.
At the top of the funnel, it's even harder.
While you might convert people from an ad, others might see your ad but convert later through another channel. How do you track that? Imagine putting up a billboard outside your store. Sure, you know people are seeing it, but did they come in because of that? Or did they see it, Google your name, and buy three months later online?
With digital attribution, connecting the dots becomes a tangled mess that could mislead you into thinking your marketing isn’t working at all.
Can You Measure Brand Awareness?
Some say brand awareness can't be measured. That's not true—it just requires different methods.
Sometimes these methods are abstract and can be more expensive to pursue.
But first, it’s important to reorient how we even think about the marketing function the top of the funnel. It’s not about tracking immediete actions after someone sees an ad. It’s about planting seeds.
You’re reaching a LOT more people, most of whom aren’t even in-market. These activities matter because they keep your brand growing. But the time delay and complexity make it hard to track their impact. This is where digital attribution becomes impossible.
But there is a way to get the information you need.
Low-Cost Ways to Track Brand Awareness:
Start tracking branded organic searches.
Earned media: media coverage, an social mention, an unsolicited Yelp review or even a reshare of your blog post.
Add "How did you hear about us?" to forms. Sure, self-attribution is not flawless, but when looking at patterns, it can give us valuable insights when done properly. Chris Walker points out that this is a free way to get valuable insight that companies are not using right now, especially for things like impact of organic content.
Mid-Tier Investment:
Consumer Surveys: Look into services like Attest or Wynter that will allow you to run global research surveys for people outside of your database for insight on brand awareness. You can use it to track that before and after campaigns and see results change over time. I especially love that they support an ongoing method of research, rather than just doing it once every 5 years.
Higher Cost, More Rigorous:
You might not be able to afford these, but it can be helpful to know about them.
Traditional market research: Focus groups, etc: With these you typically need help from an outside agency. You can find things out like, “What’s your intent to purchase in this time period?” or “Would you recommend us to a friend?” But these can require large enough sample size to be statistically relevant.
MMM: This is a statistical analysis technique that looks at years of historical data—sales, spend, seasonality, and external factors (like economic shifts or weather)—to figure out what’s really driving business results. It breaks down all your marketing efforts—TV, paid search, organic, PR, email, out-of-home, etc.—and isolates the contribution each one made to your overall results, like revenue or awareness.
It answers questions like:
“How much did our podcast sponsorships contribute to awareness compared to paid social?”You need a lot of clean, reliable data. And usually a data science team or an external agency to build the models.
Causal Analytics: While MMM looks at long-term patterns, causal analytics is more about isolating the impact of a specific campaign or tactic—did this actually cause that to happen?
Instead of saying “we saw more branded search after our campaign,” causal analytics tries to answer:
“Would that have happened without the campaign?”How it works:
It often uses A/B testing frameworks or synthetic control groups (comparing exposed and unexposed audiences).
This lets you measure true lift in awareness, purchase intent, or other metrics—caused by your campaign, not just correlated with it.
Keep in mind - this is not an exhaustive list. But as I keep learning myself, I’ll keep adding to it.
The point is — brand awareness is measurable, but it’s not always feasible for every team.
If your organization is thinking that digital attribution tools are all they need -— they might not be willing to invest in the measuring methods, and it’ll be hard to get the answers they want.
Why Many Marketing Teams Aren’t Set Up to Measure Anything
It would be great if the only issue was measurement. But the real problem runs deeper:
Most teams never set themselves up to measure in the first place.
Half the battle is just making marketing measurable.
Take Facebook ads, for example. The platform gives you metrics like impressions and clicks—but connecting that to actual sales? That’s a whole different beast. And it doesn't happen automatically.
Tracking doesn't come out of the box.
It requires technical setup and alignment across tools:
Code on your landing pages
Integration with your CRM
Consistent tracking through to your thank-you page to log a conversion
And if you're using a third-party landing page (like in your email platform)? You'll need to get that tracking code working there too—and ensure your UTMs don’t get stripped when people jump from one tool to another.
Most teams don’t have this infrastructure in place.
Why not?
There's a widespread lack of understanding of how tracking works
Overly complex tech stacks break the data trail across platforms
UTMs get lost in redirects
CRM systems don’t talk to marketing tools
And there’s no clear feedback loop after a lead comes in
According to Deloitte, 67% of marketers say data silos and integration issues are major roadblocks to meaningful measurement. No surprise there.
Even after a lead converts, teams often don’t know if they were qualified—or why. Without collaboration between marketing and sales, without clear form questions, and without follow-up systems in place, it’s nearly impossible to learn and improve. When marketing doesn’t have visibility into how Salesforce or other CRMs are set up, that insight disappears completely.
Before you can measure anything, you need to build the foundation that makes measurement possible.
And the truth is, most companies skip that step—then wonder why their data doesn’t tell them anything useful.
If These Numbers Are Important, Why Aren’t We Acting Like It?
If I can convince you of anything here it’s to…
Don’t treat marketing analytics as an afterthought.
Your next marketing hire shouldn’t be another content creator—it should be a marketing data analyst. Or at minimum, invest in training your current team in analytics and finance fundamentals. Because data doesn’t interpret itself. It needs to be interrogated. Trusted. Understood.
Stop driving blind with attribution.
Many teams don’t talk about what model they’re using. Is your tool defaulting to a last-click model? Is that undervaluing some of your efforts without you realizing?
Fix your funnel’s foundation.
Before you even talk about measurement, ask: Can we actually track what we need to track? Make sure your tech stack doesn’t kill your UTMs or break attribution when leads cross platforms. Identify the gaps. Fill them.
If we say data matters, we have to treat it like it does. That means more than dashboards and reports—it means resourcing the people, systems, and training to make the data reliable.
And maybe—just maybe—we need to stop asking marketing to prove its value every quarter…
when we haven’t even given it the tools to measure it properly.
