How to course-correct when your approach to marketing reporting doesn't serve your business (with customer examples)

A few days ago, I shared a blog post on the top signs marketing reporting is holding you back, and I heard from many people with important questions and feedback. Many were intrigued by the Marketing Reporting as a Product approach but had already heavily invested in company-wide data tools like Snowflake, Fivetran and Looker.

While many data and marketing folks are frustrated that reporting and insights aren’t working effectively, they've accepted these limitations and have little appetite to spend more money or time on a new approach.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I’ve learned a lot over the last 6 years and wanted to share my perspective on common approaches to marketing reporting often fall short - and what you can do about it.

Key signs your marketing reporting is falling short

Marketing reporting's main job is to provide marketers with actionable insights at the speed of business. However, for many enterprises, the reality looks quite different. Here are some common struggles faced by marketing teams:

• Long turnaround times for data requests: the traditional analytics workflow requires weeks or months to deliver on a ticket, such as a new metric, dashboard or dimension, undermining actionability;

• Limited data exploration and flexibility: if marketers can't freely explore data or find the platform unintuitive, they'll avoid use it and find workarounds - primarily spreadsheets;

• Shadow reporting: marketers build shadow reporting in Looker/Data Studio and spreadsheets for specific use cases - such as budget pacing, creative analysis - that your marketing reporting can't deliver due to insufficient granularity and long waiting times;

• Decisions based on incomplete data: steering based on backend data - such as incrementality, COGS and attribution - is key. Many teams struggle to activate such data for daily steering.

Here are common struggles faced by data teams that result in high operating costs:

• Never-ending cycle of marketing requests: marketing analytics teams often spend significant time handling tickets, quick questions, and "on-call" duties, taking time away from key priorities like marketing measurement and AI;

• Data warehouse and ETL costs increase: serving more granular insights (e.g., ad-level) significantly increases marketing reporting tools costs.

If you want to learn more about these challenges, check out this blog post: signs your marketing reporting is holding you back.

The hidden cost of your broken marketing reporting

When marketing reporting doesn’t live up to expectations, the impact goes beyond JIRA tickets and has significant consequences for business outcomes:

• Wasted marketing spend: Delayed or incomplete decisions lead to missed optimization opportunities and inefficient campaigns (lower ROAS);

• Employee frustration and wasted time: Morale suffers when analytics teams spend more time on tickets and quick questions, while marketers wait months for new dashboards or resort to manual spreadsheets;

• Diverted resources: All marketing requests take time away from analytics priorities (measurement, AI), and marketers building spreadsheets or shadow systems detracts from their core work.

Your current approach is likely costing millions of dollars per year (delve into the math here).

Making a change (without the headache)

If your marketing reporting approach isn’t fully delivering, change is necessary, but let’s be honest: after investing so much time and effort into building it and training stakeholders, starting over can be a non-starter. The good news? You don’t need a data migration process that will take forever or rip and replace your current setup. A more thoughtful approach is to start small and build from there.

Step 1: Evaluate your status quo

You likely have an ideal state of marketing reporting in mind. Have you been able to achieve it? How long do marketers wait for new insights? How can they uncover actionable, granular insights? From what I've learned, many teams are unhappy with their marketing reporting status.

Take Bitpanda, for example. They wanted quick, actionable insights to stay ahead of competition. Their marketing reporting approach couldn't deliver the speed and flexibility required for marketers. When they adopted Clarisights, they unlocked new capabilities and agile data-driven marketing steering.

Step 2: Understand biggest gaps and challenges

For most enterprises, the broken operating model has become "accepted." Thus, it's important to diagnose the current status and compare it against what great looks like to measure the potential impact of shifting.

Notably, HelloFresh recognized this gap and embraced the product-centric approach, reducing CAC by ~10% through better, faster insights (with full onboarding in less than 4 weeks).

Step 3: Optimize your analytics workflow

Many setups claim to offer "self-service" tools, but marketers remain dependent on data teams for new metrics, dimensions, and dashboards—or they have to use SQL. If your marketers dread using your BI tool, that's a big red flag.

At Delivery Hero, their former marketing reporting setup didn't offer the right self-serve tools. Marketers relied on data teams whenever they needed to answer a new question. With Clarisights, data is now democratized to 300+ marketers across markets and brands.

Step 4: Start small with a low-lift test

Embracing a new marketing reporting approach doesn't have to mean a massive, painful overhaul. A better strategy is to test one high-impact use case or a limited scope and build from there.

For instance, On Running onboarded their paid social team within a week and scaled efficiently through 3x more tests and new optimization levers. Instead of waiting years to see results, they saw immediate improvements, which paved the way for the new product-driven approach.

Final thoughts

Marketing reporting should empower marketers to uncover actionable insights, not hold them back. Your analytics team should focus on key priorities, not turn around a never ending cycle of tickets. If your current approach isn't delivering results, it's time to change. The goal isn't just to collect data—it's to turn that data into meaningful action.

Feel free to get in touch with our team and schedule a demo or reach out directly to me at arun@clarisights.com