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4 Metrics You Need To Track In B2B Lead Generation Programs

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Measure Your Marketing InvestmentEnterprise B2B marketers face a conundrum. Businesses needs to drive growth and lead generation is a key way the business expects marketing to contribute.

However, sales cycles are long. It can take months, even years, before marketing is able to prove the value of lead generation efforts with revenue. And you can’t afford to wait that long to optimize your investment and show results.

The first article in this series on publisher lead generation programs looked at the cost of lead generation programs. Here we will look at how to measure and optimize your program effectively in the face of long sales cycles. [Read more…]

5 Metrics Every B2B Marketer Should Track

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Ring with old keysYou have a lead generation program. An influencer program. An advertising program. A marketing automation program.

You measure every detail about every program. And your programs are doing great.

There is just one little problem: you are reporting on a series of programs. Even though reporting shows you are becoming a better marketer, it doesn’t show how marketing, overall, is progressively improving your company’s position. [Read more…]

Marketing’s Broken Foundation: Measurement

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Data is the foundation for analytics. Analytics is the foundation for marketing driven by data and insights.

When you start with bad data, you get erroneous insights and your marketing goes in the wrong direction.

A recent research result from ITSMA and Vision Edge Marketing is eye opening. Even though the importance of starting with good data should be obvious, B2B marketers are analyzing and optimizing marketing from a broken foundation. [Read more…]

The Greatest Danger in Marketing: Metrics

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Confused Street Sign by Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious, on FlickrWithout marketing metrics, marketers cannot manage investments or show the value of marketing. However, without careful selection of metrics, diligent analysis and a clear overarching vision, those same metrics can become the biggest barrier to successful long-term marketing programs.

Short term metrics are easily gamed, and it often happens unintentionally. Here are a few common metrics for B2B marketers and ways some businesses influence the metric without driving long-term results. [Read more…]

B2B Marketing Metrics [#B2Bchat Recap]

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Join #B2BChat on Twitter every Thursday at 8:00 PM EasternWhat are B2B marketers biggest measurement challenges? How do they effectively communicate results within the organization? What are the trends they are looking towards in 2012?

We tackled these and other questions during the weekly #B2Bchat discussion on Twitter on December 8, 2011. Highlights from the discussion along with additional commentary on each question is below. [Read more…]

Online Media Needs Innovation, Not a TV Standard

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This is my opinion about the recent IAB, ANA and 4A’s principles for online measurement. If you don’t like rants, or think the advertising associations can do no wrong, stop reading and go back to Lycos. Otherwise, read on and share your reactions in the comments below.

The IAB, ANA and 4A’s recently outlined five measurement principles as part of Making Measurement Make Sense. The objectives, outlined below, are admirable:

  • Define transparent, standardized and consistent metrics and measurement systems to simplify the planning, buying and selling of digital media in a cross-platform environment.
  • Drive industry consensus around a solution.
  • Establish a governance model to support ongoing standards development, manage change and ensure compliance.

The problem is, as someone that has spent the last ten years (gulp) in this industry, the principles and their intended impact are mostly nonsense. [Read more…]

Online Advertising Metrics: A Simple Framework

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When planning an online advertising campaign, or reviewing results, the data can be overwhelming. It seems everything can be measured sixteen different ways. Other times, it seems nothing that matters is measured. Lots of data, but little to no actionable information.

When digital campaigns are not driving a single discrete activity, like an ecommerce transaction, selecting metrics requires care. We cannot measure the ultimate outcome (sales) with a long sales cycle and be agile marketers. It takes too long and there are not enough sales to provide meaningful insight into each element of a program. We have to select metrics that have sufficient volume and are available quickly as proxies for our long-term objective, sales and revenue.

The following framework is a useful starting place, [Read more…]