What B2B marketers need to know about measurement

By:?Lynn Teo , Chief Marketing Officer, Northwestern Mutual

This post is part of the?LinkedIn Collective , which is designed to inspire excellence and success for all B2B marketers. The Collective offers groundbreaking thought leadership and content resources informed by LinkedIn data and insights, our team of experts and leaders across the B2B marketing industry.

Measurement. It’s a very simple, yet complex, word in B2B marketing. "Alphabet soup" acronyms abound: MQLs (marketing qualified leads), SQLs (sales-qualified leads), CAC (customer acquisition cost), CLV (customer lifetime value). When it comes to showing the value and ROI of your marketing investment, having the right measurement KPIs and frameworks in place is critical.?

Compared to B2C, we know the B2B marketing buying cycle typically takes longer, about 12 to 24 months. Unlike marketing directed to the end consumer, more often than not, B2B marketing does not have a physical or tangible product associated with it. Rather, it’s about understanding and relating to the ‘why’ behind choosing a solution or service offering from a specific brand.?

In other words, you have to convince the prospective customer to consider the purchase of your product: Why?you?versus your competitors? As a B2B marketer, you have to cut through the noise and ask: What’s the differentiating factor for your brand? This one question can be challenging to answer. It is hardly surprising that two of the most difficult metrics for most B2B marketers to move the needle on are unaided awareness and brand familiarity.?

The power of data and insights

So, what are marketers to do? For starters, it’s critical to invest in research. This is a philosophy that has served me well with the B2B organizations I’ve been fortunate to be a part of.

Take, for instance,? Northwestern Mutual : As a company, our mission is to free Americans from financial anxiety. We’re unique in our industry – and we are highly focused on living our purpose. First, as a mutual company, everything we do is designed to help our clients become more financially secure.??

In other words, we are not a publicly traded company; our nearly five million policy owners are our shareholders.??Being a purpose-driven company guides business strategy, creates differentiation, and – in our case – fuels long-term growth and relevance.?

Before embarking on our most recent?brand campaign, ?we found it imperative to conduct research into the thoughts, beliefs, wants and needs for our existing and prospective clients. Therefore, our marketing strategy was rooted in the place where our culture and insights intersect. We firmly believe in this research-first strategy in order to meet consumers where they are at in their financial planning journey.

Second, to inform unaided awareness and brand familiarity, conduct in-depth, one-on-one interviews with your target audiences. The end result remains the same as the research: to truly understand?why?and?how?your audience relates to your brand and its offerings.

Ultimately, you have to articulate why your “thing” is better than your competition’s. Simply put, you haven’t moved the customer forward in the purchase journey if you can’t answer this question. And ultimately, you will never move down the conversion funnel if you don’t understand the emotional and functional levers behind brand preference and unaided awareness.

Ensure you’re set up for success: measurement outcomes?

There is an increasing focus on leading indicators and ensuring marketing efforts are getting you the right outcomes. An increased focus on shorter-term metrics, for instance, will give you a sense if you’re moving in the right direction. Shorter-term metrics also allow you to be more agile if you need to adjust, including pivoting away from, any existing marketing investments that are just not delivering. Sure, you may not be able to put the brakes on something already in-progress from a holistic marketing campaign perspective, but these short-term metrics allow you the option to call a “timeout” and make any necessary adjustments. We learned this recently when we launched our local market test for the Great Realization campaign. Our national media spends were yielding 10x more web traffic when coupled with targeted local market investments like digital Out-of-Home (OOH) and local paid search programs. However, initial results showed low lead conversion impact. That insight led us to conduct a deeper analysis of search result destination pages in our digital ecosystem, and to identify specific pages of our network office webpages that received the most clickthroughs as leading indicators of content engagement.

Another key focus area when it comes to measurement: ensure you have multiple touchpoints with your audience. Often, marketers are too laser-focused on a marketing attribution model that only leans on first-touch or last-touch attribution. As a result, brands simply hang their hats on a first or last touch interaction – and this could leave you with metrics based on incomplete, or even worse, false assumptions.?

When I think of a successful marketing campaign with multiple touchpoints that leveraged numerous channels, MasterClass ?comes to mind. In 2019, I remember vividly seeing and receiving many types of communication – from enticing, digestible content in inbound emails to print ads and billboards around New York over a period of six-nine months. Some of the online video ads shored up Masterclass topics that resonated with me (Anna Wintour teaching a class on creativity or Howard Schultz sharing actionable nuggets on leading through crisis). I didn’t have to work hard to understand the benefit of what they were selling; rather, I was reminded, through a steady and creative cadence of information, of the benefit they were offering.

In order to implement multiple touchpoints, bring in other business functions beyond the marketing team, to attain full enterprise alignment across a variety of channels. To put this bluntly, if the marketing team thinks they can do this independently, they are mistaken. Marketing functions?have?to be embedded within the enterprise and operate in an environment of delivering OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) that align with corporate goals. Every business model requires a vision of marketing that is bespoke and purpose-built. For some organizations, marketing initiatives like recruitment are imperative to the growth of their distribution channels, whereas for others like retail DTC (direct to consumer), developing a loyalty program is the path to retention and continued customer engagement.?

Is perfection attainable?

The good news is that the B2B marketing industry is waking up to the fact that measurement is critical. Most, if not all, B2C CMOs have built performance marketing teams to lead the charge on measuring marketing impact and ROI. While this may not seem eye-opening, it’s progress. Just five-10 years ago, CMOs at B2B companies didn’t necessarily have a go-to measurement strategy.?

I can confidently say to my fellow B2B marketers that when it comes to measurement – don’t strive for perfection. There will never be a perfect measurement plan, and that’s okay.?

What is imperative is making sure the key stakeholders from the whole enterprise have a seat at the table and are brought in early to align on metrics. It’s imperative to understand?why?consumers would invest in your product or service offering through market research and focus group discussions. And finally, ensure you have the right marketing attribution model – one that factors in numerous touchpoints across a variety of channels that provide rich insights into what led to the holy grail of marketing: progression down a journey to net sales conversions and ongoing loyalty.?

From there, you’ll be well on your way to achieving success.