The use of digital analytics for measuring and optimizing digital marketing performance

Abstract

Demonstrating the monetary outcomes of marketing is no longer considered a virtue but a necessity by the top management. Marketers are increasingly held accountable for their actions, yet most marketers struggle in their attempts to measure marketing performance. The emergence of digital analytics tools (e.g., Web analytics) has raised optimism of improved measurability due to its ability to track customer behavior in the digital environment. However, research lacks a clear understanding of the opportunities and limitations of digital analytics, and what it takes from an organization to make the most of its usage. The dissertation advances the knowledge in this area by investigating how industrial companies can use digital analytics for measuring and optimizing digital marketing performance. The primary data of this dissertation come from three case studies that examine the use of digital analytics from different angles. The first case study explores the use of digital analytics for overcoming universal marketing performance measurement challenges; the second case study investigates the organizational processes for measuring digital marketing performance through the use of digital analytics; the third case study takes a step further and studies how digital analytics data can be harnessed for optimizing digital marketing performance. The findings confirm that digital analytics produces data that can be used for measuring and optimizing digital marketing performance but its real value is determined by an organization’s ability to process the data into meaningful insights and act upon those insights to continuously improve results. Overall, the findings suggest that the greater use of digital analytics can be seen as a movement toward data-driven marketing where marketing decisions are based on information rather than experience and intuition. While demonstrating the benefits that companies may gain from the use of digital analytics, the dissertation also discusses the dangers of relying on digital analytics data that may lead organizations to maximize short-term revenue generation at the expense of long-term marketing performance.