Top 5 Essential KPIs for B2B Marketing Reports

The past few years have been a whirlwind for B2B marketers, with the pandemic forcing a shift toward digital channels and requiring marketers to adapt their strategies. In-person events, a traditional source of leads for many B2B companies, were temporarily halted, leading to the need for upgrading the Martech stack and finding new ways to measure campaign effectiveness. Additionally, economic uncertainty has resulted in some companies reducing their marketing budgets.

Despite these challenges, B2B marketers have continued to embrace Account-Based Marketing (ABM) as a go-to strategy, thanks to the scalability made possible by intent data providers. Additionally, B2B Marketers have had to adapt to changes in the customer base, reevaluating their ideal customer profiles in response to shifts in priorities and budget constraints. All these changes occurred in a relatively short period of time, highlighting the need for adaptability in the ever-evolving B2B marketing landscape.

Activation rate:

Last year, Forrester updated its B2B Revenue Waterfall to better reflect the sales and marketing funnel in an account-based marketing (ABM) context. According to this new framework, the primary role of marketing is to activate accounts, and the activation rate measures the success of marketing campaigns in terms of engaging and prioritizing buying groups after identifying their intent. In the Forrester B2B Revenue Waterfall, prioritized accounts are similar to marketing qualified leads (MQLs) in a funnel that focuses on individuals rather than accounts.

Pipeline speed:

This key performance indicator (KPI) measures the speed at which accounts move through the sales funnel, providing insight into which campaigns are most effective in driving them. For example, if your company's sales cycle typically takes 180 days and a particular campaign or channel results in closing deals in 90 days, then focusing on those campaigns could potentially double sales within that time frame. On the other hand, if some campaigns are taking longer than expected to convert, this KPI alerts you to make adjustments in time to meet revenue goals. It is a critical metric that is often overlooked due to the difficulty of calculating it without the proper tools.

Volume trending:

This vital metric provides an overview of activation trends over time. Are your marketing campaigns generating more account activations compared to the previous month, quarter, or year? Are activations decreasing during a specific period? Volume trending KPI requires a historical record to provide context for the current data. A martech solution that integrates with your company's CRM system can track volume trends and facilitate data sharing across the organization, including with sales teams.

Progress towards pipeline goals:

At the start of each year, B2B organizations establish pipeline goals, with marketing and sales leaders determining the number of activations and average deal size required to reach these targets. The progress against pipeline goals metric shows how close the organization is to achieving these objectives. Additionally, this metric is beneficial in fostering collaboration between marketing and sales teams and ensuring their activities align towards the same goals.

Progress towards revenue goals:

This metric encourages alignment between sales and marketing by allowing both teams to monitor the progress toward achieving revenue objectives. It provides valuable insights, such as identifying which marketing campaigns generate the most revenue, which messages drive the biggest deals, and which industries respond the most, allowing marketing teams to allocate their budget in a way that maximizes revenue.

A vast majority of B2B marketers have adopted account-based marketing (ABM) as their go-to strategy. With the help of companies such as 6Sense, DemandBase, and Bombora, marketers are able to pinpoint businesses that express an interest in purchasing their products or services, providing a chance to interact with members of the buying team.

As in-person events have resumed, most B2B marketers have continued to increase their outreach efforts on digital channels, requiring a way to evaluate performance across both in-person and digital channels, to compare results over time using historical data, and to create reports that demonstrate how marketing is driving value. The five key performance indicators (KPIs) mentioned here can provide the necessary insights to do so.

By using these KPIs, marketing and sales leaders can also enhance collaboration between their teams. Efficiency in marketing can improve ROI in two ways: more efficient processes enable teams to accomplish more with limited resources, and more efficient allocation of marketing funds enables CMOs to increase revenue without increasing expenses. The appropriate KPIs can aid marketing leaders in achieving both of these objectives.