B2B Marketing Measurement

Part #8

Introduction

Usually the final step in any of your marketing activities (and the final part of this guide) is the process of measuring B2B marketing KPIs and performance, then extracting insight and reporting on findings before finally seeking optimisation opportunities.

There tends to be two key sets of marketing metrics you need to develop regardless of what you are measuring (content, channels, campaigns etc) – which can be categorised as primary or secondary. Primary metrics are usually those directly tied to measuring your objectives (again, it depends on what B2B marketing strategy component you are measuring) and enable success measurement, and secondary metrics relate to general performance and best-practice benchmarks.

1. Brand Metrics

Analysing key elements of your brand development, and strategy execution in the marketplace. This is a fairly difficult category to cover as it involves collating qualitative data primarily from current and potential customers.

Brand Awareness: A measure of how familiar target segments are with your company and brand.
Brand Equity: The perceived strength of your brand among target segments – as this equity increases, so does the perceived value that is associated.
Value Proposition Strength: How well your value proposition and overall offering resonates with target audiences.
Brand Association: The opinions and thoughts that target audiences associate with your brand, measured against your brand strategy.
Brand Preference: A measure of how likely target audiences are to purchase from your business as opposed to competitors.

2. Content Metrics

Analysing key elements of your content marketing function including processes, strategy, and execution.

Shares/Republishes: The number and frequency of your content being shared across social networks, communities, and web entities.
Comments: The number of comment engagements within the content piece itself (if comment functionality is enabled) – you could go a step further and identify positive comment percentage.
Likes: The number of likes, upvotes or any other positive attribute associated to your content by users.
Views: The total number of views that can be broken down into unique and return visitors – a high return rate suggests that readers are highly engaged with the asset.
Downloads: Similar to views but used for gated content assets that sit behind a form and require a ‘value exchange’ to unlock and download the asset.
Leads Generated: Whereas the ‘downloads’ point is usually assigned on a per asset basis – leads generated will take an overview of all leads generated from all of your assets.

3. Channel Metrics

Analysing the performance and effectiveness of your marketing channel mix – and the individual strategies associated to each.

3.1 – Website

Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who exited your website on the same page they entered the site on – a high bounce rate on a particular page suggests it is not effective at engaging and funnelling users towards a suitable next step.
Exit Pages: Common pages that users leave your website on – over time you should capture a list of your worst performing pages (those with high exit rates) and formulate how you can develop the CTA or create additional content for that page.
Popular Pages: Pages that your website visitors visit the most – or spend the most time on.
Channel Breakdown: Your website traffic broken down by key marketing channels.
Average Session Duration: The average length of time that visitors spend on a particular page – to boost this metric, the usual method is to insert additional content or diversify content format such as adding video.
Unique Visits: The number of unique visitors to your website or individual webpages.
Converting Pages: The webpages across your site that deliver the highest user conversion (usually a form submission).
User Flows: A visual representation of how users move through your website pages and interact with your CTA’s.
Page/Site Load Speed: The time taken for a webpage to load (providing a site average) – a fast loading website is essential.
Page Views: The total number of page views across your site – this is a good indication of general engagement and interaction levels.

3.2 – SEO

Keyword Ranking: The average rank in search engines a particular keyword/phrase that your website associates with.
Keyword CTR%: The number of times your website result is clicked (when displaying for a keyword/phrase) measured against the number of impressions (the number of times it displays in search engines).
Keyword Impressions: The number of times your webpages display in organic search when triggered by a keyword/phrase.
Keyword Clicks: The number of times your webpages are clicked by a user after being triggered by a search keyword/phrase.
Number of Backlinks: The number of website/webpages that link back to your website/webpages – which is one of the most important ranking factors.
Quality of Backlinks: Not all backlinks are considered the same – with a backlink from a highly authoritative website carrying more value than that of a low scoring DA website.
Domain Authority: How credible your website is in the eyes of search engines – the higher the DA the higher your webpages will rank in organic search.

3.3 – PPC/Online Ads/Remarketing

Ad Position: The rank of your ads in search engine results pages – the best performing sit in the top-4 positions.
Ad CTR%: The number of times your ad is clicked, measured against the number of times it displays.
Ad Impressions: The number of times your ad displays after being triggered by a keyword/phrase or your targeting criteria.
Cost per Click: The amount you pay per every click of an ad.
Cost per Conversion/Acquisition: The total cost of an ad campaign, measured against the number of conversions.
Quality Score: A performance measurement assigned to your online ads – the higher the quality score the higher your ad rank.
Conversion Rate: The amount of leads generated by an online ad, measured against the number of clicks.

3.4 – Social Media/PR

Follower Growth: The number of additional followers you acquire over a period of time – a steady growth indicates that your content is engaging users.
Engagement Rate: A combination of likes, shares and comments all combined as ‘actions’, measurement against the total number of impressions/views a post earns.
Brand Mentions: The total number of posts from external users to your company that mention your brand – further to this, you could determine a positive mention percentage.
Media Views: The total number of views your rich media content and videos generate.
CTR%: The number of clicks your post earns, measured against the total number of impressions.
Inbound Traffic: The amount of traffic your social posts and content drives back to your website and webpages.

3.5 – Email

Open Rate: The number of times your emails are opened, measured against the total number of emails sent.
Click-Through Rate: The number of times your email CTA’s are clicked, measured against the total number of email opens.
Time on Email: The average duration that users spend reading your emails.
Conversion Rate: The number of leads generated, measured against either emails send, opens, or clicks.
List Growth Rate: The number of additional subscribers you accumulate over a period of time.
Unsubscribe Rate: The amount of contacts who unsubscribe from your email communications, measured against the number of emails sent.

4. Campaign Metrics

Analysing the performance and effectiveness of your marketing campaign strategy. As B2B marketing campaigns are largely driven by content and channels – you could take a higher-level view and analyse each key element more broadly (or cherry-pick key datapoints from above).

Landing Page Performance: Includes several metrics from the ‘Channel – Website’ section above.
Email Performance: Includes several metrics from the ‘Channel – Email’ section above.
Ad Performance: Includes several metrics from the ‘Channel – PPC/Online Ads/Remarketing’ section above.
Content Performance: Includes several metrics from the ‘Content’ section above.
Lead-Generation Performance: Includes user conversion-based metrics and lead/MQP/SQL/opportunity generation along with metrics from the ‘Funnel’ section below.

5. Funnel Metrics

Analysing the performance and effectiveness of your marketing automation, nurturing and funnel system.

Lead Velocity: The growth of leads within your marketing funnel, usually calculated on month-by-month basis.
Avg Time at Stage: The average time that a lead/opportunity spends at a particular stage in the marketing funnel.
Lead to Opportunity Rate: A percentage rate calculated to identify the number of generated leads that progress to a live sales opportunity.
Lead to MQL/SQL Rate: A percentage rate calculated to identify the number leads generated that progress to either MQL or SQL stage.
Return on Investment: Expenditure on marketing activities measured against how much revenue was generated as a result.

6. Measurement Tools & Platforms

To enable your marketing measurement process, you will need to use a selection of tools and platforms that gather, interpret and report on the KPI’s you decide to track. Under this broader umbrella there are multiple types you should consider.

Channel Specific Tools: For each channel (including SEO, PPC, online ads, social media, email marketing and your website) there are dedicated tools that contain powerful reporting functionality. It will obviously depend on the channels you utilise, but you should be able to align your measurement needs with a suitable tool.
Data Analytics & Reporting: Dedicated analytics tools that can integrate data points from multiple different channels – providing a universal view of your marketing performance.
CRM: A dedicated platform or entity to holding and managing records on both the contact (lead, customer etc) and account (company, prospect) level.
Automation: These can relate heavily to the channel and CRM elements above – but automation focusses on managing workflows and automated processes related heavily to your campaign and content efforts.
Funnel Analytics: Dedicated tools related to the analysis and performance of your marketing funnel and sales pipeline.