How to Track B2B Marketing KPIs
The modern marketing world is one where it’s much easier to track results than ever before. In the early days of marketing, businesses had to use coupons, unique call-in phone numbers, or ask customers how they found out about you.
But today, all of that guesswork is taken away. We have detailed dashboards and reports to help us know how we are performing.
And when it comes to B2B marketing, there are specific B2B KPIs that can help you track your marketing success.
It is a little trickier to track business-to-business marketing results than for direct to consumer marketing.
This is because there are several layers to businesses making buying decisions. More people are involved, and often the path to choosing your product or service is a lot longer than in consumer purchases.
With this in mind, here are three B2B marketing and sales KPIs every business owner should care about:
- Lead Conversions
- New Buyer Opportunities
- Current Customer Revenue
Let’s review each of these B2B KPIs in more detail.
1) Lead Conversions
Obviously, lead conversions are an essential metric to follow for any business. They give you a feel for how well your direct marketing efforts are working for your business. Often called a ‘marketing qualified lead’ these are key to customer acquisition as part of your marketing strategy.
Leads are people who have some interest in your product or service, but they can also be fickle. You must continually nurture the new leads through to the next stage of your funnel. To better track conversions, you can look at:
- How many unique visits to your website
- How many email newsletter signups
- How many form-fills you’ve received
- How many phone calls were received
- How many people chatted with your sales team
It’s vital that you can distinguish between the top, middle, and bottom-of-funnel conversions.
The top of funnel leads will be more about general interest or finding more information about your products. The middle funnel leads are more interested in matching the problems they have to your products and services. The bottom of the funnel is about competitor comparisons and calls to action, and incentives for those ready to buy.
2) New Buyer Opportunities
Opportunities are qualified potential customers that are in discussion with your business. This is the epitome of lead generation for both ecommerce and B2B sales.
They are qualified because they need your product or service can fill. They have the budget to pay for it, are looking to buy within a reasonable timeline.
These are prospects that you have proposals with. These are people who have been in a one-to-one discussion with your business. All these factors don’t guarantee a sale, so you’re still hoping and planning on closing. That is why they are called opportunities and not customers.
It’s crucially important to keep track of your opportunities’ interest in doing business with you. They are the most direct source of potential new revenue. This means remaining in consistent contact with them. Follow up any inquiries they might have and help them move towards buying.
If you don’t have a system to track opportunities, Hubspot offers an excellent tool to help. By breaking your current opportunities into several categories, it can give you a feel of how close they are to a decision.
This way, the whole organization can measure the value that the marketing and sales team bring to the organization, and you can close more deals effectively.
3) Current Customer Revenue
Customer revenue (i.e., cash flow) is a metric most marketing people don’t typically consider. Because they are so focused on attracting new leads and opportunities, they neglect to think about how much money their past efforts are accruing for the business.
Current customer revenue is the money you make or lose from your existing portfolio.
As a rule, every month, it is a good idea to measure:
If we get a new customer from a referral or an upsell, how much monthly revenue have we gained?
If a client leaves our business, how much monthly income is lost?
Why are these questions important for B2B businesses and marketers to focus on? Because if you’re not thinking about customer retention as part of your marketing campaigns, then you’re missing one of the biggest drivers of revenue growth:
The reality is that it is much more profitable to keep customers than to try to source new ones all the time. Repeat business leads to upsells and referrals and grows your brand value.
These three simple B2B Marketing KPIs will help to keep a clear focus on what matters most in your business. While it is essential to track profit and loss for the end of year results your business achieves, these KPIs will help your business stay on track and attract new customers and clients.
