<$MTBlogName$

« How to write a B2B case study that will generate leads | Main | Why your B2B inbound marketing strategy isn't working »

Marketing metrics to measure success and drive strategy

By Kate Lee | 09/02/2014 | 1:01 AM

To grow your B2B business you need to take a comprehensive data driven approach to marketing.  Metrics enable you to measure success, drive strategy, and demonstrate the ROI of your marketing efforts.

What metrics should you track?

Given that your objective is to attract, acquire, and retain customers, the most effective metrics to track are those where the unit of focus is the prospect, lead, or customer.  These include the following:

Visits

Visits capture the number of visitors to your company’s website in a given period of time.  In addition to tracking the total number of visits, it is also important to track visits by source.  That is, how visitors come to your website.  Sources typically include direct traffic, organic search, referrals, social media, and email marketing.  

Reach

Reach is the number of people who can be reached through your marketing channels (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook).  This metric is a good indicator of how well the content you are publishing attracts new people to your network, and how well the content engages people within your network.  In addition to tracking your company’s total reach (the total number of people you can reach across all channels), you should also track reach by channel.

Leads

Leads are one of the strongest indicators of ROI.  By tracking leads by source, you can identify where your marketing efforts are most effective, areas where you can improve, and areas you could eliminate from your strategy.

Customers

Customers are also a strong indicator of ROI.  Like leads, customers should be tracked by source.

Conversion rates

Conversion rates measure the percentage of people who are moving from one marketing stage to the next.  An increase in your conversion rates implies an improvement in the quality of your content and/or traffic.  You should track the visit-to-lead conversion rate (How many of your website visitors are becoming new leads?) as well as the lead-to-customer conversion rate (Are you generating sales-ready leads?).

Ranking

Ranking matters.  The top listing in Google's organic search results receives 33 percent of the traffic compared to 18 percent in the second position.  Two metrics you can track are your domain authority and your marketing grade.

Domain authority is a score ranging from 1 to 100 that represents how well a website will perform in a search engine ranking. The lower the score - the less likely it will be found.  Marketing grade is a holistic measure of a site's online presence as measured by HubSpot's Marketing Grader on a scale of 0-100.  A higher score is better.

How to track metrics for success

Having an established database to capture your marketing metrics is critical to success.  Here is a great template that can be downloaded to track your metrics, measure success, and drive strategy.  One of the great features about this template is that it generates graphs that can be used in your reports and presentations.

Comments

bbb

By submitting your comments, you agree to our Terms of Service.

The opinions expressed herein are those solely of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of Agile Business Media, LLC., its properties or its employees.

About Elizabeth Hines

Elizabeth Hines

Elizabeth is a content strategist with 12+ years of experience in content development, branding, marketing, and communications. As the creative/editorial director at Fronetics, she oversees all efforts related to content and creative assets, including strategy design and brand development.

She has written extensively about supply chain and logistics, and has developed content strategies across a number of verticals, including the B2B space. Prior to joining Fronetics, Elizabeth worked at Boston University, Prospectiv, and Cengage Learning.



Categories

Popular Tags

Recent Comments

Subscribe to DC Velocity

Subscribe to DC Velocity Start your FREE subscription to DC Velocity!

Subscribe to DC Velocity
Renew
Go digital
International