As a marketer, your program measurement should reflect how the tactics are supporting the goals of the organization, while also acknowledging team and campaign efforts. For B2B marketers, this means tracking how efforts are contributing to opportunities, leads, and wins in your sales pipeline. Given the long and complex sales cycles for B2B businesses, these attributions may not be recognized. B2B marketing teams and organizations should devise a way to track smaller goals around tactical program investments that ladder up to the larger, overarching revenue goals.
Building an omnichannel measurement program
Capturing tactical wins with a cohesive omnichannel measurement program makes it easier to quantify how each touch point drives your organization’s overall objectives of converting opportunities to wins. Measuring throughout the program can also help identify potential optimizations.
Here’s how you can build an omnichannel measurement program:
- Define your larger measurement goals. Base goals on overarching business objectives, incorporating data or insights to optimize your marketing tactics. For example, if you’re looking to cross-sell existing users, you will want to suppress users who have already converted (or you know won’t convert). Make sure to also include key metrics that are new or expanded as part of your test framework.
- Begin testing your methodology on a single channel. This will help you prove or adjust your initial hypotheses. A good place to start is programmatic display. Once you’ve tested on the first channel and find a successful strategy, think about how you can expand it to other channels. You’ll also want to continuously iterate on your strategy to extract incremental value, such as testing enterprise accounts’ response on standard vs. native-based advertising or using a rich video format.
- Select your media mix. Choose your media mix based on its ability to be measured. Some channels can be harder to measure, but persistent identity resolution opens the door to many more opportunities.
While there are no “quick wins” in ABM, measuring as you go can help you get an earlier view into what is contributing to pipeline creation. Just as the B2B sales cycle takes time, so does your value from a B2B measurement solution. In a recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned by LiveRamp, “Advanced ABM Programs Require Advanced B2B Measurement Solutions,” of the 312 B2B marketers surveyed, those who have invested in a B2B measurement solution for more than two years can better understand and articulate the business value of ABM.
As your measurement program expands and you assess performance, be open-minded. The results may mean a shift in your campaign strategy and investments—but ultimately, for better outcomes overall.
Looking to get started with a B2B measurement program or evolve your current one? Reach out to [email protected] to see how LiveRamp B2B can help, no matter where you are on your measurement journey.