It’s a marketing maxim: Before marketers can attribute results, they need trustworthy data. And let’s be honest—most multi-location brands are trying to build performance reports without all the information. Their data is full of holes.
Attribution isn’t magic. It’s math. And when your marketing data is full of gaps, no model in the world can tell you what’s actually driving results. In this article, we’ll break down the biggest blind spots in marketing data, what makes them especially painful for multi-location and franchise marketers, and how you can safely steer through them.
Why Marketers Feel in the Dark About What’s Working
If you’ve ever sat in a marketing meeting and felt like a campaign was killing it—but had no data to back it up—you’re not alone. It can be hard to quantify what you know to be true. Since attribution is simply math, it must be applied correctly to get accurate results. Here are the factors that often get in the way:
Increasing Campaign Complexity
As your business scales, you’re no longer running “a few ads.” You’re juggling paid search, display, social, programmatic, OTT, email, local signage, events, and direct mail. Multiply that across ten, 50, or 200+ locations and the complexity can become chaotic.
No One Source of Truth
Your platforms and reporting are also fragmented. Meta tells one story. Your email tool has a completely different set of data, and your CRM? It’s got its own language. You’ve got marketing data, sure—but it’s living in silos, and none of them are telling the whole truth.
Pressure to Prove ROI Without Infrastructure
It’s an age-old marketing challenge: Proving marketing ROI. The C-suite wants proof. The franchisees want proof. Everyone wants the performance metrics that confirm their investment is working—but few marketers have the backend systems or integrations needed to connect the dots on attribution to map the real cause and effect. It’s like trying to complete a puzzle with half the pieces still in the box.
No wonder the math is so hard!
The Biggest Data Gaps Killing Your Attribution Accuracy
Even if you get the systems right and can collect the data you need, there are attribution blind spots that can cost you real insight (and real money). Here are the ones we see most often—and how to avoid them:
1. Overlooking Location-Level Campaign Tracking
Running national campaigns without breaking down performance by location is like checking the weather in “America.” Sure, there’s data—but is it helping anyone? Without separate tracking for each store or region, you can’t optimize what’s actually driving visits to those specific spots. Generalized reporting is wasted reporting when it distorts your marketing data.
2. Offline Conversions Falling Through the Cracks
Online ad reporting is easy. But it misses the entire buyer’s journey. People are still picking up the phone and walking into stores. They’ll scan a QR code on a flyer to get more information. And none of that shows up in your GA dashboard unless you’ve manually connected the dots. Failing to capture offline activity is one of the most dangerous gaps in marketing attribution—and one of the most common causes of incomplete marketing data.
3. Failing to Integrate CRM Data with Campaign Performance
What happens after someone becomes a lead? Do they convert? Do they ghost? Without syncing your CRM and marketing platforms, you’re only seeing the “before” picture—and making decisions in the dark. To be successful, franchisees must unify their efforts through a central CRM platform and ensure their data is standardized so it is comparable across locations. Check out our article on the importance of standardization (and how to achieve it) for more details. And consider investing in a CRM that can work with your marketing platforms to provide you with the data you need.
4. Neglecting Unique Source IDs and Tracking Parameters
Campaigns need structure. If you’re not using consistent UTMs, phone numbers, promo codes, or source tags, you can’t track back. You won’t know what’s working—and worse, you won’t know what’s not.
5. Overreliance on a Single Data Source
Google Analytics is great. But it’s not end-all-be-all, especially for multi-location businesses. It can connect offline events, but it’s not always straightforward. And it often over-credits paid search. It’s a tool—not a truth machine. To get the full picture, you need to combine several sources of truth and unify your data streams.
The Impact of Incomplete Data on Multi-Location Campaigns
Now that you understand how holes can distort results, it’s easy to see how important players (and their playbooks) are affected when your marketing data is more duct tape than dashboard:
- Corporate Sees a Warped Picture: Without location-level clarity, your national team could be pouring money into channels that look good but aren’t actually delivering results. It’s garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.
- Franchisees Lose Trust in Marketing: When local owners or managers don’t see how corporate campaigns connect to their sales, they might choose to pull back on getting the word out—or worse, go rogue.
Either way, budget decisions get skewed. You might be scaling what’s not working and ditching what is. Incomplete data leads to difficulty proving marketing ROI, which results in bad decisions and bad marketing bets—no matter how you add it up.
Related: Corporate Branding: Managing Rogue Locations—And How to Prevent it
How to Start Closing the Gaps
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. But you do need to start cleaning up the data leaks. Here’s how:
- Inventory Current Tools and Integrations: What is currently connected with accurate attribution? What is not? List out where your data is coming from and how it’s being shared—or siloed.
- Implement Consistent UTM Structure: Every campaign, every channel, every location needs to use clean, standardized tracking links so you can compare apples to apples.
- Push for Local-to-National Data Consolidation: Whether it’s through a custom dashboard or a reporting partner, find a way to blend local and national data into one unified view. We can help you with that!
Want to See Real ROI? First, You Need the Full Picture
You can’t attribute what you can’t track. And you can’t optimize what you can’t measure. Before you start worrying about fancy attribution models, proving marketing ROI starts with a foundation of solid, connected, and comprehensive data.
Close the Holes
We use data-driven marketing strategies to simplify marketing success through tools like data modeling and predictive analytics, helping multi-location and franchise brands finally close the loop on performance. So you can prove what’s working—and do way more of it.
Let’s fix the holes in your data—and bullet-proof your marketing strategy too.
