*record scratch*

*freeze frame*

Yup, Grasp Metrics, that’s us. You’re probably wondering how we ended up writing this awesome report.

Well, we’re building an app (the aforementioned Grasp). It delivers cross-platform digital marketing insights from different channels in one place, with all sorts of clever insights. We want to create a world without exports, spreadsheets, and browser tab overload. Until we get there, we’re happy to help marketers around the world save time, avoid frustration and spend their energy on something better. 

The app was born out of our own experiences; on the agency side, we wanted to streamline the delivery of marketing insights and digital metrics that are key to our clients. We quickly saw that Grasp Metrics has applications outside of our own work. But a few of our assumptions were proven wrong in practice as soon as we started the human trials user tests — even when those assumptions are seemingly supported by online research.

Numerous articles and mainstream opinions told us one thing while talking to professionals painted an entirely different picture. We became increasingly convinced that theory and practice are diverging at some point, and so we needed something to re-center our approach.

Instead of what marketers think, we decided to explore how marketers feel.

And that’s why we decided to ask over a thousand marketing analytics professionals how they feel about their job and the frustrations they experience day in and day out.

Method

Thousands of people is a lot of people — like 10 very crowded buses — and we wanted to hear from all of them. So we made a super nice online survey and pestered people about it.

And let me tell you, the first thing we found is that nobody likes surveys. Nobody. But with a little elbow grease, we did manage to hit our goal through various networks, online communities, and specialized services.