You can't market what you can't measure

You can’t manage what you can’t measure – how many times have we heard that before in business? It has never been more of an important statement now when it's applied to marketing than it ever was, especially if you consider it then becomes "you can't market what you can't measure". Despite this, it still surprises me that companies don't pull together all their touchpoint data, to show what works and what doesn't. In this short piece, I give some real-world examples of what can and should be looked at within a marketing department to justify and support the activities needed to create success. I pull these ideas into a simple ratio showing the number of web page view to orders taken, so in the B2B world examined, you can get a sense of the effect each stage of the process has on the next in the buyer's journey.

"You can't manage what you can't measure" Peter Druker

In an ever more ‘ROI driven’ profession, pressure on marketing like all business functions will increase as we come out of these uncertain times. Marketers, in particular, should be practiced in showing a good return (or sometimes any return good or bad) on the activity they are undertaking. As business people, we should expect more than the all-encompassing answer that often accompanies such discussions that, “this activity will help improve brand awareness of the business”.

Every business is different, but in the tables below I show real data pulled from organizations I have worked within. This shows how the marketing budget was allocated and the number of marketing leads generated from each part of the marketing mix. You will also see how the monthly amount of website traffic varies by the digital channel as a consequence of that mix used and then how the number of those leads are created by channel source.

In conclusion, you should be able to see then which activity generates the greatest number of leads and what in reality the spend was for that activity compared to others. Again, this was undertaken within a manufacturing/engineering/tech sector B2B organization, so numbers will vary from one business sector to another.

Marketing Budgets and Leads Generated

Table 1 below, shows the percentage of the budget that was allocated to each of the marketing mix activities (top) and the number of trackable leads generated from that activity (bottom).

You will note that the majority of the budget is spent on SEO+SEA and digital initiatives which generate the largest portion of trackable leads, as one might have assumed. However more outbound marketing activities, such as exhibitions and printed promotional material, within the context of this organization don’t produce sufficient trackable leads higher than 3%. Although a further investigation into the ‘inbound call rate’ may yield a portion of such leads have been driven by physical exhibitions or printed hard copy. We may also see that digital leads could have benefited, as some leads may have been initiated initially by outbound channels, but then as the user moves to a laptop or mobile device, ended up being fulfilled by a digital category.

In this example, the particular organization operates globally, translates content into over 30 languages, so as well as digital content, a portion of printed materials may still be utilized as a preference locally. Based solely on the data it would be easy to look to reduce some of the budgets in areas such as exhibitions or printed materials – however, a channel-agnostic approach should be adopted. Plus, you may wish to repurpose physical event budgets into online versions hosted by the supplier or previous industry event organizers (as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic we are living through driving such activities into a virtual world). Budgets may not reduce but will need to increase in some organizations as they look to deploy such online exhibition events. Those organizations that have actively invested over the years in an inbound, multi-language content marketing strategy, will start to see additional benefit from their content repository. Organizations slower to adopt and invest will suffer - as content won’t be ready or available at pace in the range of languages this new way of working will require.

Monthly traffic by channel.

It is now prudent to look at the amount of traffic generated on your website by the digital marketing activity that creates it. If we assume that in the manufacturing/engineering /tech-company we are investigating, from a traffic funnel perspective per month, it receives 130k page views and 62k visitors of which 50k are unique visitors on their website.

Table 2 shows the approximate number and percentage of visitors by the digital channel that has driven them to the website (based on a last interaction attribution model).

As you might expect organic search (SEO) and paid search (SEA) dominate the channels that drive traffic to the website. There isn’t much difference between branded and non-branded SEA overall, but taken in isolation you can see they each deliver only approximately 25% of the SEM driven traffic. The importance of having an active SEO strategy and, the content to regularly support inbound marketing that would drive website traffic can’t be underestimated. You can also clearly see that the 80:20 rule should be applied when considering what activity to focus your marketing resources on. The top 3 digital activities (SEO + SEA + Display Advertising) generate 80%+ of the website traffic. You will see in the next section what impact each of these digital channels has on the number of messages generated.

Monthly e-massages by channel

In table 3, we can see the number of messages generated by the digital channel source they come from. We define e-messages as simply the message your suspect, prospect, or customer sends to you digitally. They can be generated by simply sending an email or form filling when registering for or downloading content from your website. These can be categorized according to set criteria, – I will cover this in another article separately, but for now, let's assume that the data shown includes all messages whether they are cold, warm, or hot.

What we can see as per in Table 2, is that SEO organic searching creates the greatest number of emessages. In other words, when researching your business or products, at the time your customer is ready to engage with you, they find and then react to your website/content by flagging themselves as wishing to have further contact. i.e they fill in an online form or send you a message. You have satisfied part of their need or you have shown that you can solve the problem they have. This is why content to drive inbound (pull) responses is important, plus when combined with optimizing your website for searches (SEO), it will drive this type of digital message response. Paid advertising (SEA) whether branded or non-branded isn’t as effective at driving messages - partly due to their ‘push not pull’ nature i.e. it’s your message/product being forced onto the customer who may not be ready to receive or react to it in their current buying cycle.

Display advertisements do perform a little better. This is due to the fact they are usually located in online portals or websites frequented by your prospects or customers, who may be searching or engaging with the site for business-related reasons (and find you indirectly). However, we also see that direct email campaigns can generate good emessage responses. These are usually directed to customers who have already purchased from you and know your offering. These would not usually be generic mail out lists purchased from a broker. We should expect that communicating with an existing customer who knows your offering will produce better results – assuming you have a positive relationship with them.

You can also see that 3rd party send-outs (where you rent another company’s database) can be effective to some degree, especially if 3rd party are talking to the types of prospects or customers you wish to have but don’t currently have access to. These could be supplied by an industry association or journal that communicates regularly on wider industry-specific news or topics. Within the GDPR current European legislation, this can be a good additional contact source assuming the person has already agreed to receive such types of external communications. Although this type of email send-out fits generally into the 'push' category of emails so expect only slightly better results. As with any digital activity regular small and often, rather than 'one-off' mass communications, produce the best results.

On a final note, this type of business has a conversion rate of about 1 in 3. This means that for every 3 emessages, 1 turns into a qualified sales-ready lead, in other businesses I have seen this is 1 in 6. In both cases it shows measuring your process is ultimately an integral part of justifying your marketing actions, but also not measuring this type of lead generating process can have a significant impact on your sales pipeline.

This final chart below shows ultimately the goal for B2B marketers. Marketers should be striving to establish and report out on a 'wing-to-wing' process. Here we are measuring website page views right through to orders and consequently, we can now manage the marketing process and show the business stakeholders an ROI.

Concluding comments

In conclusion, in this type of manufacturing/engineering setting, we have seen that the top 3 digital channels of SEO, SEA, and Display Advertising ultimately contribute to over 80% of the messages and leads produced. The other activities while important will have far less of an effect on the sales leads produced, but will still require significant resources to deliver them appropriately. We also have seen that budgets don’t always support the lead generating activities in the way you may expect, they can still be a useful source and create additional brand awareness. Finally, it is possible to measure from a marketing perspective your process and by doing so you can help justify why you need to keep or exceed the budget you have.