As the number of B2B marketing communication channels continues to increase, there’s a growing need to effectively measure ROI in new ways. The days of simply subtracting the cost of a marketing campaign from the total revenue it generated are long gone. Nowadays, the metrics and analysis need to go much deeper and provide much more comprehensive data. The marketers who are capable of doing this, are the ones who are likely to see their budgets increase over the next twelve months.
The key tools needed to effectively measure ROI in modern B2B marketing are a fresh approach to the sales funnel and marketing automation software.
There are currently over 110 vendors in the marketing automation space -fathomdelivers.com
As the sales cycle gets longer and more lead nurturing is needed for decision-makers to reach the sales tipping point, a larger number of ‘touches’ are needed. These touches can come in many forms including emails, e-newsletters, ebooks, case studies and even social media posts. But, the issue that has arisen is that if a prospect interacts with many of these channels and communications, which one is considered most influential in securing a qualified sales opportunity/closed business and deemed to have generated ROI?
This is where marketing automation becomes a vital component. By utilising software that tracks every one of the lead’s actions such as website visits, content downloads, social media posts etc, it’s possible to build an overview of their journey through the sales funnel. It will also be possible to determine which communications and channels helped guide them towards a sale.
The outcome is that many communication channels and marketing messages likely influence a lead to convert to a customer. But, the benefit of automation software is that the overview of leads’ sales cycles will also identify the channels which aren’t ‘working’ or improving conversion rates. These are the channels which can be cut in order to improve B2B marketing ROI.
If you want to find out more about B2B marketing ROI; how you can reduce costs and increase profit; and how you can show the real ROI of your marketing activities, then…
