Top 10+ Reasons Why Companies Fail at Metrics

From E-Consultancy in the UK comes their latest “Online Measurement and Strategy Report,” which (for $150) provides exquisite measure and detail about the challenges and occasional successes companies are having in tracking what is going on in this most measurable of all media.

Here’s the list of reasons why companies fail in their online metrics reporting:

1. Lack of budget/resources (45%)
2. Lack of strategy (31%)
3. Siloed organization (29%)
4. Lack of understanding (25%)
5. Too much data (18%)
6. Lack of senior management buy-in (18%)
7. Difficulty reconciling data (17%)
8. IT blockages (17%)
9. Lack of trust in analytics (16%)
10. Finding staff (12%)
11. Poor technology (9%)

All of these add up to one broad, miserable trend: senior management doesn’t understand what online metrics are, and they don’t care.  The Web is an adjunct media choice to the primary forms of marketing communications: broacast, print, and public relations.  Senior management isn’t comfortable with online communications, especially when it starts to get into alien behaviors like Twitter and Flickr.  (Why would anyone let strangers see their photographs?)

The change will come slowly, especially during a recession.  But this is one of the major disconnects marketing and sales driven organizations will deal with.  More and more of their customers are spending time online and more of them are using online resources to manage and influence their buying decisions.  If I was the owner of a B2B software company I’d pull every dollar out of trade show booths and plow it back into supporting my customers deicsion-making and day to day work challenges through online media.

And then I demand to know where my online media metrics dashboard was….

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