How effective are you at tracking your metrics and following the right data?
Mike Anderson
| Accredited Business Mentor and investor bringing fun , energy and experience
You must track metrics for at least a month, ideally three, to accurately measure the success of your campaigns.
Why a month? Why not weekly?
Rushing to prove ROI within the first month is a common mistake that businesses make. You of course want to see if your investment is working, but a few weeks data won’t give you the full picture. Not giving it long enough can lead to inaccurate results as the average B2B sales cycle length is 6+ months, meaning you might not have enough data to measure success accurately before a month is up.
By tracking data for at least a month, and I’d push you to three months (!) you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and make educated decisions allowing you to demonstrate the value of your efforts to stakeholders and justify future budget approval. It also takes a good three months to bed in an organic social media strategy, let alone start working on your paid strategy and measuring those metrics.
As to which KPIs to start tracking though, here are 3 of the most tracked B2B KPIs and why you need to be monitoring them;
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Simply put, CLV is the total value a customer brings to your brand throughout their entire relationship with your brand. This includes ongoing subscriptions, upsells, and referrals. How much are they worth to you financially over the long term?
Tracking CLV as a key performance indicator can help you understand your marketing efforts' true return on investment (ROI). Optimizing your tactics and approaches and targeting the right personas can attract and retain the most profitable long-term customers. Of course, that’s not as easy for your company to track as something like ‘views’ on Twitter, but it is worth your company diving into your customer data to see what those metrics can show you.
2.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) . This metric measures the total money spent on sales and marketing divided by the number of customers acquired. In layperson's terms, it indicates how much it costs to acquire each new customer.
While CAC is a valuable metric, it's essential to consider additional factors like the long-term impact of brand campaigns on customer acquisition and the lifetime value of a customer acquired to understand its usefulness fully.
Tracking CAC as a key performance indicator can provide insight into the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts in converting new customers, while lower CAC can help you optimize your strategies and improve profitability.
3.
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Click Through Rate (CTR) CTR measures the ratio of total impressions to clicks in B2B marketing campaigns. It's commonly used in various contexts, like;
email marketing, sponsored content, and paid search,
where the number of impressions and clicks can be measured.
When we work with The Growth Guys on our paid campaigns for clients, this is one of our measurements. As a frequently used KPI, CTR allows marketers to adjust their campaigns on the go, and a strong CTR means your campaign resonates with your target audience and drives engagement.
It's essential to keep an eye on your KPIs, but like any data tracking, it's possible to focus on the wrong thing and waste your efforts. Here are three data-tracking mistakes you want to avoid;
If the aim is to generate leads- use a cost-per-click (CPC) metric to measure success. However, this can be problematic because CPC doesn't give the complete picture of whether a campaign is successful. Sometimes an awareness campaign doesn’t need to measure this, ensure you are choosing the right metrics to measure.
58% of decision-makers want a return on investment (ROI) to justify spending and gain future budget approval. This can pressure some marketing departments into making quick decisions without fully understanding the impact of their campaigns. Think long term, and work together to make the most of the campaign, giving those metrics time to reflect the bigger picture. (Your marketing team will thank you for it!)
Overall, it's essential to take the time to measure the success of B2B marketing campaigns accurately, use the right metrics, and communicate the value of marketing efforts to stakeholders. Otherwise, you're likely to miss out on key opportunities for growth and improvement.
If you’d like to chat about having Dottt deliver a marketing solution for your company, or would like me to mentor you and reflect with you on how your brand is utilizing your in house marketing team, get in touch, and let’s chat. ????