Running a business, especially a B2B or business-to-business company, entails having an effective marketing strategy to ensure that the company’s target goals are met. However, without knowing what aspect of your business marketing strategy to improve on, it can be difficult to translate these goals into actionable steps.
This is why marketing KPIs or marketing key performance indicators are necessary for successfully achieving the goals of your B2B company, especially for high-level ones that need more concrete and actionable steps.
So, what are KPIs? KPIs are metrics that a company can use to measure and get a clearer view of how well or badly they are doing in terms of achieving vital company objectives. They are considered helpful tools that companies, especially B2B ones, can use for the further improvement and development of their company’s business strategies. In fact, 95% of leading marketers agree that to matter and stay relevant, marketing KPIs should be linked to the bigger business goals.
With that said, just how important is B2B Marketing KPIs? Moreover, what are the different marketing KPIs that B2B companies need to focus on in order to successfully achieve their target goals?
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Importance of B2B Marketing KPI
As mentioned, KPIs are metrics that companies use to measure the effectiveness of their business strategies and how well they’re doing when it comes to achieving company goals. However, marketing KPIs are often interchanged with marketing metrics and while KPIs can be marketing metrics, not all of the latter can be KPIs. Marketing KPIs tend to have these four characteristics:
- Directional
- Actionable
- Quantitative
- Practical
All of these qualities are why marketing KPIs can be incredibly useful for the continued development and growth of a B2B company, especially when it comes to achieving their target goals.
In terms of importance, using marketing KPIs can help you gain insight into how well your company is doing and how effective your marketing strategy is. They are indicators of the actual performance of your company and can be used to help you translate your high-level goals into actionable steps that will promote the growth and development of your company.
How so? Well, for one, they are directional and quantitative. This means you can see in concrete terms such as numbers and percentages how much and whether or not your company is progressing when it comes to achieving its business goals. They give you a definitive answer to whether or not your strategies are effective.
In addition, the practical and actionable nature of marketing KPIs means that they can be integrated to work with existing company policies and systems, using these indicators to further improve them and thus, making them more efficient and effective.
This means you don’t have to waste valuable company resources on implementing new strategies – you can simply improve on the ones that already work.
Marketing KPIs You Should Track
While marketing KPIs can be helpful for a company’s growth, not knowing which marketing KPIs a B2B company should keep track of can end up being counterproductive.
This is why focusing on tracking just the following KPIs will do more to benefit your company than say, tracking every single indicator.
Sales
Sales KPIs are how your sales team measures your company’s sales activities, especially the relevant ones, and these help them analyze how well your services or products are selling. These indicators are the direct result of how effective or ineffective your marketing strategies are. They can be a good way to indicate how much your company is growing and which strategies are contributing to this.
By keeping track of a company’s sales, the marketing team can see which ones are selling and which ones need improvement and adjust their campaigns according to what works. However, when it comes to measuring this metric, simply measuring the amount generated by your company isn’t enough to indicate what are the weaknesses of your marketing strategies and how you can improve them.
This is why when tracking sales KPIs, you also need to consider detailed reports of the volume of sales, the sales margin, the cost of acquiring it, and its promptness.
Leads
Leads are important if you want to acquire sales. After all, the more leads you have, the more opportunities you have to convert them into sales. Tracking your leads help your marketing team gather the data necessary to improve their strategies and campaigns which in turn, can successfully convert those leads to actual sales.
However, when it comes to tracking leads, you need to be able to differentiate between the two types of leads – Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
These leads are the ones more likely to become customers based on the gathered data. MQLs are the potential customers who have shown more interest and engagement and are more ready to be contacted compared to the typical leads but haven’t been fully converted yet.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
On the other hand, these are the leads that have had direct contact with your sales team and are considered to be prospects that are more ready to decide than MQLs. They are the ones that your sales team has vetted and can be contacted directly for a sales follow-up.
Tracking your leads and understanding the difference between the two types of leads can help you convert them from leads to actual customers. Moreover, understanding the differences between the two can also help you understand your Leads to Close ratio which can be computed by dividing the number of generated leads over a period of time by the actual number you managed to close.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer Acquisition Cost is the amount your company shells out just to convince prospective clients to patronize your business. This includes the amount you spend on marketing strategies and campaigns to help convert potential customers into actual paying ones. And once they convert, it’s important to keep them interested since customer acquisition may cost up to seven times more than retaining customers.
Tracking how much you spend on acquiring customers is vital for businesses, especially B2B companies because it can be considered as part of the production cost. Aside from this, tracking your customer acquisition cost can also show you how much you’re spending on a particular campaign and how successful that campaign is in converting potential customers to actual ones.
Tracking it will help you figure out if a campaign is effective enough to be worth the cost and allow you to allot your budget properly.
Website Traffic
Anyone visiting your website can be considered as a potential lead or customer. Depending on how effective your content marketing strategies are, they can be converted into actual paying customers just by visiting your site.
If you’re running an eCommerce site, then this is one of the vital metrics your company should be tracking. This will give you an idea of who and where your visitors are, how they managed to find your site, and more importantly, what they’re looking at.
Tracking your website traffic can help you anticipate the type of content your customers want to see on your site and therefore, allow you to create campaigns that will ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Landing Page Conversions
Landing pages are there to encourage your website visitors to perform a certain type of action such as signing up for your newsletter or a free trial of your services. This is why tracking if their conversion rate can be a great way to show you just how effective they are at enticing your audience into performing your desired action.
It can also be a way for you to analyze what kind of optimizations you need to do in order to convince more of your target audience to perform that particular action. Some of the strategies you can employ are:
- Adding a sense of urgency
- Displaying relevant content
- Improve its loading speed
- Be as specific and clear with the Call-to-Action
It’s important to do Customer journey analysis in order to enhance conversion rate just like what 60% of online marketers do.
The prevalence of social media in today’s society has made it a useful and essential tool for various companies’ marketing teams everywhere. It helps reach one’s target audiences on platforms where they can surely reach them. In addition, social media can also serve as a great platform through which customers, whether previous or potential, can engage with one’s brand.
Tracking your social media engagement can be useful at helping your company figure out on which platform your target audience is and whether or not you’re reaching them. Moreover, it allows you to allot your marketing team’s resources to the platform through which you’re getting the most positive results, saving you on time and effort since not all platforms are the same.
Email Marketing Performance
Aside from social media, another direct line you have to your customers is through emails. This is why tracking your email marketing campaigns are just as important as tracking your reach on social media.
When it comes to email marketing performance, they show you just how well your campaigns are reaching your target audience and whether or not they’re effective at convincing them to continue patronizing your company’s products or services.
Some of the KPIs that should be tracked in your email marketing performance are:
- Open Rates
- Delivery Rate
- Conversion Rates
- Click-Through Rates
Each one has its own relevance when it comes to determining how well your email marketing campaigns are doing and they can tell your team a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
Tools to Track B2B Marketing KPIs
Of course, it would be difficult to track your marketing KPIs without the right tools. Analytical tools don’t just keep track of the various KPIs of your business but they can also be helpful at analyzing them. Some can even provide you with suggestions as to how you can improve your strategies in order to be a step closer to meeting your set goals.
Below are some of the most common tracking tools that every digital marketer should know and use in order to create more effective marketing campaigns and business strategies.
Google Analytics
Supported and designed by the company behind the world’s number 1 search engine, Google Analytics offers companies an incredibly detailed insight into a company’s online performance. It’s fairly easy to understand despite being a complex tool that allows you to comprehensively track your company’s KPIs and other metrics.
Another great thing about it is that it provides you with all the main metrics needed for your business on one dashboard as well as gives you convenient detailed reports – and all of these are for free.
Geckoboard
Another alternative for businesses to track their KPIs is Geckoboard which provides companies with a convenient and easy to use drag-and-drop interface, giving them the option to customize their dashboards according to their preference.
It was designed for teams that struggle to concentrate on the main points of their business and it integrates various software like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce to help marketing teams focus on what’s truly important – to create effective marketing campaigns and strategies to help achieve the company’s business goals.
While it’s not as comprehensive as the other options, Geckoboard is an ideal option for those who want to keep their teams focused on the results by allowing them to visualize them.
Salesforce
Another popular tool for tracking marketing KPIs, Salesforce takes a bit more time to learn compared to the other tracking tools. However, once you get used to it, Salesforce can open up many opportunities for your marketing team to improve their strategies and campaigns.
Salesforce allows for building personalized dashboards for your company, whether it’s a general one for the entire company or individual ones for each employee. By doing so, Salesforce allows your employees, especially your marketing team, to focus on the important points of your business.
While it can be daunting to use at first due to the many options presented, once you get used to it, it can be a powerful analytical tool for your business that can help it create effective marketing campaigns to achieve your company’s high-level goals.
Scoro
Designed for small to medium-sized businesses, Scoro features an impressive arsenal of tools needed to track all of your B2B company’s marketing KPIs. It comes with a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to use, especially for beginners.
However, despite its simplicity and ease of use, it’s comprehensive enough that you’ll have everything you need to track the progress of your company’s growth and help your marketing team come up with effective marketing strategies and campaigns for the continued success of your business.
It’s a cloud-hosted tool that can be accessed through the web or through your smartphone, whether it’s iOS or Android.
Tableau
Another excellent option for tracking and analyzing your marketing KPIs is Tableau. It comes with a wide range of preset templates that you can utilize for your business’ needs. Its design was built with eCommerce and retail companies in mind but don’t let that stop you from using it as its extensive range of features can be useful for any business.
Among all of the analytical tools here, Tableau is the only one that offers real-time blending that offers its users insights based on its gathered data in real-time. It also incorporates data from other sources such as Google Analytics, Excel, and Salesforce.
Datapine
Datapine is a software solution that allows companies to track their data as well as give them insights on the performance of their business, allowing them to create decisions based on the gathered data in real-time.
It features an easy to use and straightforward drag-and-drop user interface which is helpful for allowing users with no technical background to view and understand the data. Aside from this, Datapine allows for the unlimited creation of dashboards and features an extensive database of graphs and charts that allow you to present data in a more digestible manner.
Like other analytic tools, it focuses on the visualization of gathered data so that its users may understand it fully and make the most out of it to improve their marketing strategies and campaigns.
Other useful features include predictive analytics, intelligent alerts, as well as interactive dashboard functions; all of which were designed to help businesses track and analyze data for their business strategies.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to creating an effective marketing strategy or campaign, it’s undeniable how useful marketing KPIs can be. Tracking various marketing KPIs allows companies, especially B2B ones, and their marketing teams to have a clearer view of the actual performance of their strategies and whether or not they’re effective at meeting their target goals.
Aside from that, tracking and analyzing the various marketing KPIs can help marketing teams adjust and improve their existing campaigns to make them more efficient and effective. By putting KPIs at the forefront of a business’ decision-making, a company will be able to meet their target goals while maximizing the resources they already have.