7 Demand Generation Metrics to Accelerate Your Sales in 2022
Key B2B Demand Generation Measurement Areas
Before studying the B2B demand generation metrics, we would like to throw light on the key areas to measure in your demand generation funnel:
Engagement
Engagement metrics are the success measurement meter. This data helps marketers understand how people react to their campaigns. Engagement data tells how many people visited your site, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and more.
Performance
Performance metrics evaluate the success of your whole marketing funnel. It shows how your lead generation strategies worked in acquiring and converting potential leads. Performance metrics include marketing qualified leads, sales cycle length, sales-accepted leads, and other metrics.
ROI
The rate of investment is the most important metric to ensure whether your marketing budget is being utilized in the right manner or not. If ROI metrics are in your favor, it means your marketing budget is allocated correctly. The popular ROI metrics are customer lifetime cycle, total revenue, conversion rate, etc.
7 Important Demand Generation Metrics for B2B Marketers
A well-rounded demand generation strategy is compiled after considering different improvement areas. The targeted demand generation metrics depend upon the marketing strategy that you are deploying to?generate leads.
It is always recommended to focus on relevant demand generation metrics. Spending your time on irrelevant metrics will unnecessarily create complications for your salespeople.
Here are the top 7 demand generation metrics that B2B marketers must measure:
1. Marketing Qualified Lead
The first demand generation metric marketers should measure are?Marketing Qualified Lead?(MQL). This is a basic metric to know whether you are on the right track to meeting company goals or not.
An MQL is someone who is very likely to convert into your customers. These leads are already vetted by marketing teams. Salespeople simply have to nurture them.
So, MQLs are not your customers yet, but they can be if nurtured in the right manner.
To measure MQL demand generation metrics, marketing and sales teams have to first decide on key indicators of a qualified lead. There are many indicators that can help you identify MQLs, such as:
The MQL key indicator also depends on your marketing goals and strategies. For example, if you are using email marketing to interact with and nurture your subscribers, a signup form on your website is the main point to measure?MQL metrics.
On the flip side, if you publish original content and whitepapers on your website, the number of visitors and downloads can determine your MQLs.
2. Sales Qualified Lead
After MQL, SQL, also known as sales-qualified lead, is the next demand generation metric.
You will know whom your potential customers are by marketing qualified leads metrics. But, SQL will take you one step further and show leads who are ready to convert. SQLs are the hottest leads that need minimal work to convert.
Like MQL, SQL will also be calculated based on predetermined indicators. Once again, your marketing and sales team have to collaborate together and decide on factors to identify SQLs. Mostly, SQL factors are more direct, such as:
It is common knowledge that your MQLs will turn into SQLs. But for that, you have to nurture your MQLs in the proper manner, for example:
3. Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value, aka CLV, is a vital financial performance metric for marketers. If you wish to generate maximum profits from individual customers, this metric is highly important for you.
Often marketing teams spend lots of time and resources on capturing leads, and then sales teams work on nurturing those leads. But, it is a major setback for your marketing resources when you don’t get optimum value compared to the time and resources spent on nurturing a lead.
CLV shows the revenue generated by a customer throughout the life cycle of a business. You can allocate your marketing and sales resources to high-value customers by calculating the?demand generation?metric. You can even run?account-based marketing?campaigns on those high-value customers who bring more profit to your organization.
There are many factors that affect customer lifetime value metrics, such as your customer services, marketing approach, after-sales services, and other internal factors.
However, it is not that hard to calculate your CLV rate. You have to bring the following things into account to calculate CLV:
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With the help of this demand generation metric, you can focus on high-value customers more and prepare personalized marketing strategies for customers who purchase less from you. This way, you can nurture your high and low-value customers separately.
4. Cost Per Acquisition
The customer lifetime value metric is quite competent on its own. But if you want to gain a complete outlook on your rate of investment,?cost-per-acquisition?demand generation metric support is also required.
Today, marketers are spending a lot on digital marketing to grow their brands. In fact, during the pandemic crisis in 2020, over?378.6 billion US$?was spent on digital marketing.
In this, you might also be spending a lot on digital ads, social media marketing campaigns, or email marketing to build a popular online prime. But how will you know that all your marketing money is actually generating any revenue?
For this purpose, you have to focus on the customer-per-acquisition metric. It will show you how much revenue each marketing campaign is generating for your business. This knowledge will further empower you to invest resources in the marketing channel that brings more revenue to your business.
CPA is also a mathematical demand generation metric. According to Charles Hughes (startup expert), CPA is simply “calculated by dividing all the costs spent on acquiring more customers (marketing expenses) by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent.”
5. Average Payback Period
Knowing the cost per acquisition will only tell you how much you have to invest in acquiring new customers. But if you want to know when your investment will start generating income, you have to calculate the payback period.
As the name suggests, this demand generation metric will show the time you need to recover the cost of your investment. In layman’s terms, the payback period is the time interval when your?customer’s journey?will complete in your demand generation funnel.
It is basically the time period when your marketing investments reach a break-even point. If we take the example discussed in the above point, then the time that will take you to recover the $5 customer acquisition cost is your payback period. That could be a week, month, year, or even more.
Here’s how you can calculate the payback period:
CPA / ARPA = Payback Period
?CPA?– Customer Per Acquisition
ARPA?– Average Revenue Per Account
This metric will help you better understand how much and when you will generate revenue from your marketing campaigns. It is a very important demand generation metric while planning a budget or forecasting the growth rate of your marketing efforts.
6. Content Performance
Content is one of the most crucial demand generation metrics that can help marketers a lot. A survey showed that?47% of B2B buyers?prefer to engage with at least 3-4 content pieces before making a purchase.
That means when people click on your blog posts or download a whitepaper published on your website, it shows their intent to buy your product or services. Thus, it is very important for B2B marketers to invest in dynamic content marketing strategies to bring more leads into the demand generation funnel.
Every content piece that you share on your website or social media networks provides different data on your user’s behavior.
For example, when someone downloads an ebook from your website, it shows that they want to know more about the services offered by you.
On the contrary, when someone follows you on social media, it tells that they are familiar with your brand but still want to know more about it.
Here your marketing and sales team needs to try different content marketing strategies to stimulate different behavior from your customers. You need to target different keywords, publish the versatility of content on your website and engage your audience on your social media posts.
Salesforce is the best example of this demand generation metric. The brand targets blogs, ebooks, tutorials, research papers, and other content marketing strategies to measure major demand generation metrics.
7. Close Rate
This is the most important and final demand generation metric that every marketer should calculate. The close rate metric shows how many leads actually convert into customers. It is basically a conversion rate that every marketer wants to know.
However, close rates should be calculated for individual marketing channels. Suppose you are targeting email, social media, and blogs to promote your business online. In that case, you have to calculate the close rate for each one of these marketing channels separately. The reason?
The close rate per marketing channel should be calculated separately because each marketing channel has a different CLV, CPA, and budget.
Therefore, to optimize your demand generation funnel as a whole, you have to calculate the conversion rate for individual?marketing channels?and later compare them side-by-side. This way, you can focus on the marketing channels that bring maximum conversion rate to your business.
For example, suppose you are receiving maximum leads from your blogs rather than social media campaigns. In that case, you can reduce your social media marketing budget and allocate it to publishing more valuable blogs.
Calculating close rates for individual marketing channels separately might sound daunting right now. But, if you practice marketing automation in your organization, it will become easier to monitor your marketing campaigns' progression and their conversion rate.