In its most recent issue, BtoB magazine published a survey of B2B marketing analytics in which most respondents confess relatively minimal involvement in analyzing their web data for marketing insights.

Almost half, (44%) are not at all or only somewhat involved in analyzing website performance. Only 7% say they are fully engaged with Web analytics. And a mere 6% report they are very effectively using Web analytics for measuring online activities.

It is, of course, a cautionary tale for those of us who advocate better use of analytics to establish B2B marketing ROI and accountability.

But the main question is, what’s stopping us? The BtoB survey cites lack of resources (71%), followed by low priority for management (38%) and personal lack of knowledge (37%).

We would suggest a few other considerations, reflecting the evolution of the tools at our disposal:

Value. For many years, web analytics had limited usefulness, reflecting their original mission -- helping webmasters do load balancing on their servers -- and only offered marketing data as an afterthought. Things have changed. We can go well beyond clickstream data and even coordinate data with attract mechanisms and with engagement tools like CRM to track a user from initial interest through offline purchase. So now we can really know something more than “hits,” which analytics guru Avinash Kaushik claims is an acronym for “how idiots track success.”

Infrastructure cost. Once again, things have changed. The cost to develop an end-to-end solution to track marketing activity has come down significantly. CRM and web analytics systems can now transfer information much more easily than before. As a result, tracking a user and determining the success of a marketing tactic (or lack thereof) is much easier than it was years ago.

So marketers who gave up on the possibility of tracking the return on their marketing investment as recently as a few years ago would be well advised to revisit their assumptions.

Failing to take full advantage of today’s web analytics results in many missed opportunities: the chance to implement the kind of continuous improvement program that’s common on the factory floor. The opportunity to learn more about engaging our markets and our audiences. And, most importantly, the opportunity to show the C-suite that marketing is serious about marketing ROI and accountability.