Has this ever happened to you? Your tracking study gets scrapped or moved to another supplier due to personnel changes or under-delivery. Colleagues start questioning the reliability of the results, and you’re left wondering if it’s even telling you anything meaningful. Instead of valuable information, you’re stuck with a rigid data dump that leaves you asking, ‘So what?’
The time, money, and effort that goes into setting up a new tracking study can be staggering—only to end up with disappointing, unhelpful data. And to make matters worse, once you’ve committed, you’re locked in for the long haul.
In this article we’ll cover common challenges with tracking studies and provide some tips to help you improve them.
Common Problems with Tracking Studies
There could be several reasons why your tracking study needs to be revisited. Let’s explore some common issues experienced with tracking studies so you can avoid these pitfalls in the future.
Too much time and money
In terms of time and budget, tracking programs can be a big commitment. According to experts at the Profiles team at Kantar, the average tracking study can range from 20K to 200K. Of course, this varies depending on the scope, needs, and complexity of your study. From setting up the study design to maintaining it over multiple waves, the costs quickly add up. Businesses must weigh the costs against the value they expect to gain.
Too much variability
When a tracking study undergoes frequent changes — whether in survey structure changes, question wording tweaks, or methodology shifts — it risks losing its core purpose. Instead of revealing trends and insights, it becomes a collection of disconnected data points that can’t be compared or trusted. Without a stable foundation, your tracker stops being a tracker, making it difficult to draw reliable conclusions or measure long-term performance.
Lengthy questionnaires
It’s not surprising to want to cram as much as possible into a survey in an attempt to justify the cost. Sometimes specifications for a survey get way bigger than reasonable or suppliers give in to scope creep. Whatever the reason, longer questionnaires lead to poor quality data. Often, the longer the survey, the higher the dropout rate and the poorer quality of data. Kantar discovered that surveys longer than 25 minutes lose over three times more respondents than those under five minutes. Ideally, surveys should be 15 minutes or less for optimal respondent engagement.
Sample sources
Sample panels change over time, and as they do, the data provided by their respondents can also vary. This can lead to unstable and less reliable data. Basing any tracking study on poor data sources can deeply impact the lifetime value of your tracking program, making it inferior over time.
Long lag times
With tracking programs, delivery of the data sometimes isn’t fast enough to make real-time decisions. Slow delivery of data means that insights arrive too late to be truly useful. As a result, the research ends up being used to justify decisions that have already been made, rather than shaping them proactively.
Too rigid
As business plans evolve, so must tracking strategies. However, maintaining trendability requires consistent or often static survey questions. That’s why you’ll often see businesses leaving their trackers stagnant — sometimes for years. Additionally, metrics deemed crucial at the tracker programs’ inception may end up being irrelevant as time passes. One challenge is incorporating new questions that are relevant to the business at a given time while retaining the capability to track long-term trends and core metrics.
Not future forward
Another issue with tracking studies is that they tend to be inherently backward-looking, focusing solely on past performance rather than anticipating the future. Relying too heavily on past data can leave companies unprepared for emerging challenges and opportunities. It’s like hiking up a mountain while only looking back at the trail behind you.
Strategies for Overcoming Tracking Program Pain
Now that you understand some of the most common issues that can come up in executing and maintaining tracking studies, let’s review some strategies to give your program a refresh:
Invest in survey design: To get more impactful results from your tracking study, it’s essential to prioritise thoughtful and strategic survey design. Start by streamlining your survey to eliminate unnecessary questions that add length and complexity without delivering value. Effective tracking starts with empathetic design— designing surveys that are user-friendly, engaging, and prioritised for the respondent’s experience. These surveys aim to understand and address your audience’s needs, leading to better responses, richer insights, and more honest feedback.
Refine your target audience: Another critical aspect is ensuring you’re targeting the right audience—after all, even the most well-crafted questions will fall flat if asked to the wrong respondents. Investing in expert design and consultation services helps you build a tracker and sample plan that not only addresses the most relevant research questions but also yields accurate, reliable data that drives better decision-making.
Invest in high quality sample: Keeping consistent sample composition and uniform methods for data collection is important, as changes in respondent profiles can introduce unintended variability. When working with a supplier make sure to ask about their quality measures, how they are recruiting and managing their panels, how panellists are invited to surveys, what devices they take surveys on, etc. If you’re not prepared to invest in high-quality sampling and rigorous data cleaning, you can’t expect to get credible or useful results.
Build in flexibility: Effective tracking studies balance stability with adaptability, ensuring long-term trendability while staying relevant to market shifts. Incorporating ad-hoc modules offers a smart way to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) while also monitoring new topics of interest. These modules provide timely insights without disrupting the broader program, which helps businesses respond swiftly to unexpected needs. The Profiles team at Kantar can also help you incorporate ad-hoc questions the right way so you can explore new insights without disrupting long-term comparability.
Don't lose sight of goals: Start by having a precise understanding of the metrics you need to collect. Are you evaluating brand awareness, customer satisfaction, or brand perceptions? Defining your priorities ensures that your tracker concentrates on metrics that are important to your brand specifically.
Keep stakeholders engaged: Tracking studies can be the bridge that connects the dots between survey metrics and your company’s goals. Are sales low, but brand awareness is high? A brand tracking study can help see where there may be a “blockage” in your brand funnel in conversion from awareness to purchase. To keep stakeholders engaged and ensure the study remains valuable, it’s essential to periodically reassess the metrics being tracked, adapt to evolving business needs, and introduce new dimensions that capture emerging trends or shifts in consumer behaviour.
Conclusion
Maintaining the effectiveness and utility of a tracking study depends on many factors. A strong partnership with your supplier can help you ensure your program is truly meeting your needs and business goals.
Interested in learning more? For more information about tracking solutions download our full guide, Custom Tracking for Business Growth using the form below. This powerful resource dives into the essentials of effective tracking and how it can transform your brand strategy. Or, contact Kantar today to explore how tailored tracking and other survey solutions can deliver measurable results for your organisation.
