Tag Archives: Marketing Measurement
A Modeled Approach to Marketing’s Contribution
- 28th March 2013
As we provide benchmark studies for SiriusDecisions clients, we often see organizations struggle to measure marketing’s contribution to, and influence on, sales pipeline. As a first step toward capturing these key performance indicators, we walk clients through a model that breaks down typical marketing contribution and mix based on three go-to-market strategies: direct enterprise accounts, inside commercial accounts, and small-and-medium-sized business (SMB)/channel accounts.
Continue Reading....Data Measures Activities, Too
- 20th March 2013
Do your marketing reports measure contact activities (e.g. number of contacts generated from a webinar)? Do your marketing tactics use contact activity to generate the target list (e.g. contacts who downloaded certain assets)? Does your scoring model use contact activity to help prioritize leads? If you’re like most marketers, the answer to all these questions is “yes.” Why, then, do most marketing operations teams neglect to include or discuss contact activity data when embarking upon a data quality, data management or data governance project? Why focus only on field-based data?
Continue Reading....Marketing Measurement Snake Oil
- 28th February 2013
The Web is littered with prescriptions for what your marketing measurement needs to be like and look like. There’s way too much bad advice being dispensed from sources that you’d expect to be credible. Whether this advice is well intentioned or simply snake oil, b-to-b marketers need to be able to spot bad measurement advice and reject it. Here are some common flavors.
Continue Reading....Price Check: Marketing Cost per Lead
- 29th January 2013
How much should it cost marketing to acquire a lead? Is your cost per lead too high? Are you using the right demand creation programs? Calculating cost per lead can be challenging, but once this measurement is in place, you can start to review your marketing function’s performance and make periodic adjustments as needed.
Continue Reading....When Reporting on Marketing Performance, Think Switzerland
- 11th January 2013
From time to time, I’m asked where formal responsibility for marketing measurement should sit within an organization. I have to fight the urge to just blurt out “Switzerland.” While I’m not seriously advocating offshoring your marketing, Switzerland has an historic reputation of remaining neutral in international affairs. And when it comes to desirable characteristics for marketing reporting, I’d place neutrality toward the top of the list. Think about it this way: marketing performance reporting should provide a shared view of what’s really happening. It needs to answer questions like: What can be proven? What can be inferred? What can be learned? What’s going well? What must be changed?
Continue Reading....If Content Is the King, Does Data/Analytics Become the Queen?
- 4th January 2013
During the last eight weeks, I have been speaking to 30 or so EMEA CMOs to understand some of the specific regional issues they are facing and learn what marketing skills are becoming more or less important for their organizations. “Understanding the buyer’s journey” and “content” are their top two responses for what is growing in importance. That’s not really a surprise; rather, it’s a confirmation that we all feel the shift of b-to-b buying behaviors as well as the importance of understanding the buyer’s journey from start to finish and aligning content and broader marketing efforts to the needs of buyers as they make this journey.
Continue Reading....Make 2013 the Year of Realistic Thinking
- 2nd January 2013
The desire to make everything simple is lulling us into believing that great marketing execution is easy. To put it simply, that’s just not reality. Here’s my proposal: Let’s make 2013 The Year of Realistic Thinking. Why? If I’ve learned one thing over the last few years at SiriusDecisions, it’s that there’s a burning desire among marketers to simplify everything. From lead scoring and measurement to the buyer’s journey, customer lifecycle and the messages created to support it all, a common mission is to reduce the complexity. This can often be a good thing; for example, it helps us make decisions faster or prevents us from over-engineering execution. But other times, the insistence on a simple story causes marketers to lose some of the nuances that can make a big difference.
Continue Reading....Mind the (Marketing) Salad Bar
- 27th November 2012
The way some companies approach their marketing activities is often similar to a cafeteria approach. A menu that is thought to be tried-and-true is rarely tampered with, despite the dissatisfaction of patrons. Do you use the same marketing tactics and channels, in the same order, regardless of the campaign or program? When was the last time you tried a new tactic or approach? Do you even know how well so-called proven tactics have performed over time? Unfortunately, the answer to this last question is often no, and if we step back to get a broader perspective, we often see a mass of disjointed marketing tactics that resemble a disheveled salad bar.
Continue Reading....Marketing Creativity vs. Accountability?
- 19th October 2012
At the recent B2B Marketing Forum in London, where John Neeson of SiriusDecisions was a featured speaker, one of the discussions focused on the interplay between marketing creativity and accountability. Specifically, is the ongoing trend toward measuring the impact of marketing and improving ROI killing creativity and innovation? This post combines my notes from that discussion with my own thoughts on the topic.
Continue Reading....Making Marketing’s Influence Count
- 4th October 2012
When demonstrating marketing’s contribution to the business, many b-to-b organizations focus mainly upon marketing’s ability to generate new demand. Creating and progressing new leads can make up a big portion of what’s expected of marketing – but in many b-to-b organizations, net new demand creation only represents a small portion of business growth. In these businesses, marketing is expected to help create better deal outcomes by exerting influence over known individuals. Many marketers have trouble making sense of marketing influence and how it can be used to bring more value to their buyers’ journeys. The concept of influence doesn’t need to be difficult, and there’s no reason for marketers to shy away from it. Instead, take these steps to get your arms around marketing’s influence and make it actionable.
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