I am having a hard time proving to business owners the need for digital analytics for their website and digital marketing. How can I prove ROI?

It may be your messaging. Do you have current clients? If so, ask them what they like about working with you. That is the message you should use to go to the market.

I have several clients where I gave them that challenge, go ask your best clients why they work with you. When they heard the message, it changed what they said to prospects and grew their client base.

It's a simple solution that works incredibly well. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Having sold enterprise software for about 6+ years with various tech companies, I have experience selling to various lines of businesses (finance, marketing, product, etc.) A consistent theme across the many software modules that I have sold is that most modern software include high-level analytics tailored specifically to that LOB.

Business owners often times already have access to high-level analytics for their website/digital marketing tactics and won't see the value of your solution unless there is something really special about your solution for his/her direct job role. The question(s) you need to be asking yourself is:

- Are you targeting the right audience/industry to sell your solution to? Who is your ideal buyer? Which verticals have you been historically successful selling into?
- How is your solution supposed to help the business owner achieve the ROI that they specifically care about? Do you have related customers to your target audience that have already experienced that specific ROI in which you can reference?
- If budgets are locked down, are they just throwing that out as an objection? If you've been able to prove out the value numerically through your analytics in a compelling business case to the business owner (to the point where you can tie an ROI improvement to boosting their top or bottom line), the budget objection should be taken care of unless your pricing is way above the "market rate" to the point where ROI doesn't matter because the "I" is way too costly.

Happy to jump on a call to discuss how you can prove out ROI for your specific use case.

Indeed sounds like a difficult mission to complete nevertheless it is possible. The business owners you trying to prove to are probably old school hence they would believe in that you would be wasting money on digital analytics and digital marketing. To lure them in, you would have to win over their confidence. before they can buy your product they need to know they need it. How do you make them need it, well you need to relate it to something that appeals to them. and that differs between person to person. one possible way would be explaining to the person that as the world is evolving so is business and if you do not keep up with trends eventually you will become obsolete. its better for the companies name that they are using newer technologies. Use the fact that competitors are doing this as well and it is in fact is profitable.

The business owners need to understand what it is they are going to do. Via digital analytics you get to know the customer better, and that is of importance to know your customer. With data from analytics you know what to show and feed specific customers.
In this way you showing the right things to the right customers and thus making more sales.

I believe its difficult to sell digital analytics. but this is because people merely do not know.

It is strange but convincing people to take analytics and digital marketing seriously is often difficult.

One way to get around this is to offer the business owner some free competitor analysis then demonstrate competitors who are higher in Google Rankings, have more reach on social media and are thus making more sales ie 'eating her/his lunch. As you probably know, there are many other aspects and KPIs that you can compare a business with its competitors and most business owners do not like being beaten by their competitors.

The brutal reality is that where businesses aren't using digital marketing and measurement properly they will simply cease to exist or at the very least be struggling to compete against those who are.

First, I’m seeing some clues that one issue is of qualification. Are you even approaching the RIGHT business owners?

Your marketing should be qualifying / disqualifying leads before they reach you (if you’re in sales).

One of the biggest elements & causes for low sales conversions (over the last two decades selling to companies) is going after (targeting) the WRONG leads.

Second, without seeing how you present or discuss your analytics solution to prospective clients, I’m taking an educated guess here, your messaging may be focused too much on analytics itself instead of the ROI value and outcomes for the business owner.

E.g. No business owner really cares about “analytics”, but they do care about being able to easily know where to allocate their budget/funds to generate higher ROI (which is the result & outcomes from access to good analytics).

Without knowing much detail about your product/service, these are two areas I’d review:

1) Targeting & qualification
2) The message being presented to your prospects

Having been in digital marketing for 9 years, the ebb and flow of the value of digital analytics has been really interesting for me.

You'll want to work with your customer-centered teams to find your best customers, and reach out to help tell their stories featuring your analytics solution as the piece of the puzzle that helps them reach their ROI goals.

With a few great customer stories on hand, you'll be able to match the right prospect with the right story to show harder numbers.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat more about this!

Hi -

It would help to know what types of business owners you are targeting ie what sector are they in (real estate, retail, insurance, etc). I'd pay attention to your approach to offering your services to them. Are they really challenged at the moment? If it is just a budgeting issue with securing business, then maybe its time to re-hone how you are presenting digital marketing / analytics services to them. I believe this is the problem. Feel free to contact me if you would like to explore these areas together. It's a positive they are in an open dialogue with you at this point. Just try to pivot your game.

The excuses are informing you that you haven't communicated the value of the services you provide. You could consider the following:
1. Hire an experienced sales representative to bring in business.
2. Hire an experienced development professional to help define your marketing campaign from the perspective of the customer and to clearly communicate your value proposition for sales and marketing.
The latter is a universal strategic action that will efficiently increase your income for the duration of your business. Take my advice to from recommendation to revenue by booking a 1-hour call today.

From my experience with clients and their budgets, it all comes down to what they can afford and what they are willing to afford. The reason why they don't want to invest in analytics is because they don't yet see the value in it.

I recommend trying to highlight how much faulty data can cost them. They could get the same results with half the marketing budged if they spent some time and money to properly track and analyse everything.

It's impossible to come up with good solutions by working with bad data. Also, if they have a 1% conversion rate it means they are literally wasting 99% of their marketing spend so how would they not want to know how to get more out of it?

Quick answer:

Ask to confirm a paid business audit to find out all the issues and opportunities in their business.
If they don't confirm this phase don't help them as they are not aware about this matter enough to pay for your time.

In the business audit put at least 30% of the focus on showing all the analytics and metrics from competitors so they can be aware how much they are late into the analytics game and will be more interested to invest in this matter.

Two answers: 1) Ask prospects or customers if they have any idea if their marketing dollars are working, or where their marketing spend is getting the most bang for the buck.

2) If you have case studies from other customers you've helped, use those to show examples where your solution has worked for those customers. "Customer X, saw x% increase in sales directly from digital channels, while spending y% less on an annual basis. All expenses included, their ROI is z% annually.

FWIW, I disagree with the answers telling you to qualify better. Customers who are receptive to adding analytics have probably already done so, and for them, analytics are a commodity where they may seek an incrementally-better solution or incrementally-lower price.

That leaves you with customers who don't understand the value or may be resistant. You will win some, lose some, but those you are able to win over will see huge value from introducing analytics to their marketing (and possibly other areas of their business - operations, customer service, etc.).

I would be glad to take time for a call to discuss this further - please reach out.

About me: I am a business consultant, coach, and project leader working with individuals and businesses - from early stage and mom-and-pop to global firms. I specialize in digital transformation, process, business case development, and project leadership.

I feel services that are far away from revenue get prioritised less. It surprises me a business wouldn't invest into their analytics especially in todays age where, if they're on the Google stack, better analytics will correlate to more money saved on niche remarketing audiences.

Also, if they don't have budget this year and you're working on enterprise level analytics, play the long game. Keep them on your email list, keep relevant content going their way, add them on linked In and keep yourself on their map. When they do next years budget, ensure you've demonstated enough value to them. I always show them how Product Owners, the Business, Digital analysts, UX designers, marketers and machine learning/CRO all benefit from good digital analytics and in order for them to grow further, analytics is a must.

Some others answers touched on this but what you need is a case study or customer reference.

If you don't already have customers do a theoretical case study that shows what is measured and how this translated into obvious actionables to improve customer conversion via the website. Hence the common phrase "actionable insights".

Don't under estimate how simple the pitch should be for the customer. Even if they are highly intelligent, the simpler and clearer the value proposition is the more likely you will get a yes. Because then the decision is more of a common sense conclusion and no further thought/time/research required before the sale can happen.