Today's post is an excerpt from The MFS Startup Marketing Playbook.
We live in the age of metrics. - the modern b2b marketing leader is inundated with them. On the one hand, the widespread availability of data sources can provide invaluable insights into customer behavior, however, such is the breadth of metrics and data points available to the modern marketing team, that there is a danger of losing focus on what really matters.
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Data and metrics are valuable, but if you can’t interpret them with a clear focus on driving revenue growth, you're simply wasting your time. At the end of the day, the ultimate metric against which any marketing leader will be judged is revenue. While Sales teams are mostly associated with revenue-related metrics, more and more we are seeing Marketing teams take on revenue responsibility. As a general rule of thumb, it is advisable to make sure that any metrics you prioritize - you do so in a way that you can connect to revenue.
B2B Startup Marketing - Types of Metrics
All that being said, you do need to develop a deep understanding of both your revenue attribution model and also your marketing and sales funnel, and there are some key metrics to focus on. In terms of your marketing funnel, it is important to understand the following:
Awareness
- Impressions: The number of views a web page or marketing asset received.
- Clicks: The number of clicks on a marketing asset e.g. email action button, web page CTA, etc.
- Total traffic: The total number of users directed to a website, landing page, or other digital platform.
Consideration
- Total leads: Visitors who complete a conversion action.
- Traffic-to-lead conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who become leads.
- Cost per lead: Marketing spend divided by total leads generated.
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): Leads vetted by marketing as strong prospects.
- Cost per MQL: Marketing spend divided by the number of MQLs.
Decision
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and Cost per SQL: Leads approved by sales and the cost to acquire them.
- MQL-to-SQL conversion rate: Percentage of MQLs that move forward as SQLs.
- Total closed/won deals: Marketing-driven opportunities that result in closed sales.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA): Total marketing spend divided by the number of new customers.
- Marketing-attributed revenue: Revenue generated directly from marketing efforts.
- Marketing ROI: Marketing-attributed revenue divided by total marketing costs.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Revenue from advertising divided by ad spend.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Average revenue a customer generates over their full relationship with the business.
Remember, it is a combination of the critical thinking capabilities you have honed over your marketing career combined with a level of comfort with data analytics that will help you get the most out of the various metrics available to you and your team. Revenue is your true focus, and learning from the various data points available about the ways you can grow revenue should be your priority. Impressions and click throughs will do little to impress the c-suite and board level operators who think only in terms of revenue. These metrics may however help you identify what is and isn’t working across each marketing campaign and provide important insights that can be used to grow revenue.
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.