Business to business marketing performance metrics and KPIs
B2B Marketing Performance Metrics: B2B marketing or business-to-business marketing can also be referred to as e-biz. B2B marketing involves the exchange of information also known as e-commerce, products and services between businesses. B2B marketing is a commercial transaction between businesses.
Every business venture aim at having measurable Return on Investment (ROI). In online marketing, your written and visual content must be measured and tested to ensure they succeed. The best B2B marketing will ensure Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) are skillfully converted to Sales-accepted leads (SALs) that eventually become Sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
The SQLs will ultimately result into sales wins which is a good thing for the company. These transitions represents a solid revenue model.
There are four categories of metrics involved during these transitions:
Metrics for revenue transition
1. Volume metrics during marketing
The volume metrics consist those metrics you can scoop during marketing. They are done simply by counting. These metrics include amount of online sharing, visits, downloads, impressions, clicks and email opens.
2. Conversion metrics during marketing
These metrics are in rates and ratios. They include the percentage of unqualified names that become leads. Then from those leads establish percentage of those that become MQLs.
At this point it is critical to have a well thought revenue model. This is because if a name is in two places, you will have inaccurate reporting numbers.
3. Marketing velocity metrics
The velocity metrics explains how long different parts of the process are taking. The metrics explains the average time taken at every stage and the total funnel time.
Velocity metrics illustrates the amount of time taken by MQL to become SQL. At this point it is important to think of ways by which this time can be shortened.
4. Value of marketing metrics
They include metrics expressed in dollars, euros, yen, etc. They are the Returns On Marketing Investment (ROMI) and the cost per lead.
The value metrics helps in explaining how much value the marketing process produces. It provides information on the effect of marketing investment on capital. The value metrics also explains SQL’s worth compared to cost of its generation.
After establishing the marketing performance metrics, move to mapping them to owners.
This is because different people require different kinds of metrics. First is the operational metrics which includes marketing metrics like number of clicks and downloads. The operational metric is important to people responsible in ensuring systems are up and running.
The metrics provides real time feedback for rapid response to corrections. Next is the performance optimization and monitoring metrics whose loop feedbacks help managers fine-tune their efforts. They assist in testing time and again to ensure conversions continue to climb.
By monitoring and optimization, decisions for creative choices, offers and media are made. Then there are the metrics that take the longest time to master, which are the KPIs.
The KPIs make the executive scorecard. KPIs assists in demonstrating the figurative and literal value of marketing. Value metrics only tells that something is wrong and does not say what is wrong. Performance and optimization metrics will explain what is wrong.
Next: Track your marketing metrics in Excel
But KPIs can be drawn from any of the four metrics depending on your business model and marketing system.