As we mentioned in our article Utilizing Data Insights to Create Better Content, data can help direct your content marketing strategies, along with many other areas of marketing. While data is so influential, it can also be very overwhelming.

Marketers are facing the following challenges:

• Failing to set long-term goals. Long-term goals are imperative for data analysis. Since there is so much data available, marketers need to be wise and focus on the metrics that matter to the KPIs at hand.
• Being too impulsive and changing course too quickly. Analytics take time. Marketers must look at trends more so than exact numbers from one campaign or piece of campaign. Don’t give up too quickly! Results aren’t immediate and frequency and consistency can greatly impact your metrics.
• Assuming characteristics about audience segments that are incorrect. While marketers often need to assume something about their audience segments, if your assumption is proven wrong by the data, make sure to act accordingly.
• Failing to assess other variables. Data reports don’t always give marketers the full story. Although a campaign may do poorly against your standards, this may not actually be the campaign or marketers’ direct fault. There are so many other variables that marketers cannot control (i.e. other events going on in the world and user’s daily life events).
• Lacking acknowledgement of data inaccuracies. 1) Marketers must pay attention as much as possible, even when on auto-pilot for a successful campaign. 2) Understand the tools that they are using to collect data and more specifically, understand what the metrics mean relative to that tool and channel (i.e. social media platform, website, email).
• Forgetting to think like a human. Data is incredibly helpful, but only when insights can be gathered from it, applicable to the selected KPIs. When in doubt, remember to think through what the data actually means and how it can be applied to improve the overall marketing strategy.