Oh, to live in the world of B2C marketing, where you can easily draw a line directly from your marketing work to the revenue generated.
I’m kidding, of course. Sure, it’s helpful that there’s a “buy” button at the end of the marketing process much more often in B2C sales than in B2B. But that’s not universally true, and “simple” B2C marketing has an entirely different set of challenges the B2B marketers never have to think about.
For all of us — B2B and B2C — who don’t have those buy-button clicks to use in measuring marketing effectiveness, it can be frustrating to gain an understanding of how well our marketing efforts are working. This is doubly frustrating for those of us working primarily or exclusively in digital marketing, where everything is supposed to be measurable.
Even with these limitations, there are ways we can measure our marketing effectiveness, even if we can’t always tie our work as directly to revenue as we’d like. Here are a few to consider.
Message
Though difficult to capture quantitatively, it’s important to ensure that every piece of your marketing is addressing your goals. That means examining how well aligned your content is with your audience’s interests and with where they are in their buying process. Any content with a message that is at odds with your goals should be adjusted or retired.
Production
Your planning documents are likely to include editorial calendars and production schedules, among other tools. How closely do you stick to those? Can you draw any conclusions between periods of lower production — if, say, your team is tasked with other priorities temporarily — and downstream effects on revenue?
Promotion
Are you getting the word out about your content? Here, it’s helpful to draw a distinction between different kinds of content you publish. For example, social media posts are sometimes self-referential — a brief thought piece, for example. In other instances, content is externally focused, as when you link to an article of interest to your audience but from an external source. These are in contrast to content you might post about an article of your own, an upcoming webinar you’re running, an industry event appearance by members of your team, or a new research report you’ve published.
It’s important to track those content types separately and note which create more engagement and, if possible, which lead to audience action, whether that’s a sale or simply moving further through your sales funnel.
Teamwork
Most importantly, alignment between sales and marketing is key. Measurement is an area where sales and marketing teams should be working together closely. There are metrics that the sales team aren’t going to be terribly interested in — likes and follows and subscriber growth don’t pay the rent — but if you can provide data that helps the sales team focus on the most promising prospects when they are most likely to be ready to purchase, you’ll have their attention any time you suggest a meeting to review the numbers.
