Marketing teams spend countless hours each year on campaign planning, from determining budgets and campaign goals to defining audiences, messaging, and KPIs. Often, measurement marks the end of a campaign, rather than a step within the journey. But leaving measurement for post-campaign analysis can mean disregarding the time and effort spent on each component of your campaign, making it an afterthought rather than a tool for your iterative process.
B2B marketers are already aware of the longer sales cycles, with 6 to 18 months being a common range for deal closure. Your B2B measurement program should help identify where the decision makers are within the funnel, what content they might be engaging with, and how else you can interact with them to nurture the conversation.
Here are some things to consider as you’re building out your B2B campaign measurement plans:
- Start small. Build a measurement program that will scale, but don’t feel that you need to build it all at once. Identify what is measurable today and think of the digital and technical assets that will be foundational. What will help your programs immediately and what will be beneficial to know in the long term?
- Show the journey, not just the end result. Since sales cycles take a much longer time to close with larger deals at stake, keep track of every marketing touch point to see what impact it has made for the customer journey. Measure periodically during your campaign to see how each touch point contributed to the decision maker reaching the desired end result. Alternatively, if the campaign did not perform, you can make changes for greater campaign impact and efficiency if you know where to optimize.
- Develop KPIs that count. Measurement relies on key attributes to better inform your marketing practices as a whole. Instead of focusing only on marketing KPIs like sales and pipeline creation, also think about how you would gauge creative performance or if you are reaching and engaging the right audience. More granular KPIs can also be used to hold your partners and operators accountable, for transparency of performance based on every dollar spent.
We often hear how teams are constantly struggling to prove their campaign’s contributions to the overall company revenue, based on goals and KPIs developed. But it’s inaccurate to measure success based solely on closed sales or leads generated. Instead, measure the holistic customer journey with different models. Make sure to get your B2B measurement strategy up-and-running when you are planning your campaign. Check out our blog to learn how you can maximize your campaign ROIs with ABM measurement.
For more information on how LiveRamp B2B can help with campaign measurement, reach out to [email protected].