Today's post is an excerpt from The MFS Startup Marketing Playbook.
Following on from setting up your various marketing channels and small bets - what is the feedback in your monthly retro meetings? Where are your closed won deals coming from? Sometimes it can be an oversimplification to credit one channel in particular as the source of a deal as it can often be a situation where a lead might come across your product on a variety of channels before they themselves decide to post an inbound enquiry. However, setting an original lead source contact field on your CRM is well worth doing and can give you important - if not complete - insight into a successful buyer’s journey.
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You will find your fastball by tracking and analyzing the various metrics available for each channel. In the sea of modern day marketing metrics, remember you need to identify the signal from the noise. At the end of the day, revenue is the key metric. Find out what activities are linked to the most revenue and you won’t be long identifying your fastball.
To succeed in baseball, as in life, you must make adjustments.
- Ken Griffey Jr.
B2B Startup Marketing - Fastball Considerations
Every company is unique and there are a number of considerations to weigh up as you strive to find your marketing fastball or - as the case may be - fastballs. Consider the resources you have available to you in terms of both budget and personnel. Other factors will include things like average deal size, average sales cycle time, and the makeup of your target audience. For example, if you are marketing a self-signup SaaS product with relatively low deal size, but minimal or no complexity involved in the sales process - then it might not make much sense for you to be shelling out precious budgetary resources to attend expensive industry conferences. In this example, focusing on your inbound marketing efforts, building up conversions, and finessing the self-signup process should be a higher priority for you and inbound marketing may ultimately be the fastball that drives revenue growth at your company.
On the other hand, if you are targeting enterprise sales deals with 6 figure+ annual returns, then it might make sense for you to attend industry events and conferences as you look to build relationships with key decision makers at your target companies.
Finding that fastball is probably more of a priority for startup companies than larger enterprise companies with greater resources - however, there is still a lot that can be gained by understanding what channel or tactic is responsible for the most revenue generated and will ultimately help you decide where to spend your marketing budget.
On the other hand, if you are targeting enterprise sales deals with 6 figure+ annual returns, then it might make sense for you to attend industry events and conferences as you look to build relationships with key decision makers at your target companies.
Finding that fastball is probably more of a priority for startup companies than larger enterprise companies with greater resources - however, there is still a lot that can be gained by understanding what channel or tactic is responsible for the most revenue generated and will ultimately help you decide where to spend your marketing budget.
Startup Marketing - Fastball Exercise
The first four exercises in this guide are designed to be quick and used in such a way that they will help you identify areas that might need work. Unfortunately, this exercise is something of a departure in that it can not be completed over the time it takes you to make and enjoy a cup of coffee! However - the time investment you are willing to make is up to yourself and the specifics of the task are also up to you.
The mission - if you choose to accept it - is to spend some time on a revenue attribution project. The goal is to figure out which activities are bringing the most revenue into your company so you can double-down on these activities and find your marketing fastball.
The exact specifics of any revenue attribution project will vary by company, but there are some key factors to keep in mind:
The mission - if you choose to accept it - is to spend some time on a revenue attribution project. The goal is to figure out which activities are bringing the most revenue into your company so you can double-down on these activities and find your marketing fastball.
The exact specifics of any revenue attribution project will vary by company, but there are some key factors to keep in mind:
- CRM Insights - Look into key CRM contact properties associated with winning deals such as original lead source, contact website journey, length of sales cycle, etc. The goal here is to identify commonalities in both closed won and closed lost deals. Data analysis skills can be important here to extract relevant reports, but you will also need to apply some critical analysis skills to interpret the data.
- Acquisition Cost - Weigh up the acquisition costs of successful leads. There are varying models you can adopt here, but multi-touch attribution is often the most suitable for the modern buyer’s journey.
- Sales Feedback - This feedback may or may not exist on your CRM - but it is absolutely vital. Your sales team are the ones who are actively engaged with customers and they will be have invaluable insights on areas like lead quality per source, customer objections, and commonalities in winning deals.
- Winning Content - Is there a case study, web page, or other piece of content that can be linked to closed won opportunities? Look into past meeting notes to find out.
This post is an excerpt from our recently released B2B Startup Marketing Playbook. If you would like to read more you can access the Playbook in full here. If you have a marketing challenge you are looking for support with, you are welcome to set up a no obligation initial strategy consultation with our team.