B-to-B Marketing Analytics: Keeping a Seat at the Table
It’s the rare marketing executive who—when presenting financial information during a meeting in the inner sanctum—hasn’t gotten a look from the CEO and/or president that suggests, “So, why exactly am I paying you?” Yet that dynamic is starting to fade because of two rapidly converging trends:the C-suite demanding more accountability from marketing and communications and marketers adopting increasingly sophisticated analytics to deliver the goods.However, for marketers to have a seat at the table, they have to talk the talk. And these days, that's easier to do through marketing automation systems, which allow marketers to convert response data into financial terms that are understandable to the C-suite. The current generation of CRM tools also enables marketers to provide management with a clearer picture of ROI. Rather than lumping every sales lead together, B-to-B marketers can use better analytics to categorize leads into marketing-qualified leads, sales-qualified leads, or sales-accepted leads. With marketing automation tools, marketers can also measure inquiry-to-conversion rate for sales qualification and put a cost time frame for the inquiry as it moves through the sales funnel.
C-Speak
By mining the data and having a mindset for math and statistics, marketers are able to communicate their lead generation efforts in a language that senior managers can better understand. Through enhanced analytics, marketers can explain to the C-suite:
- How many sales inquiries they are bringing into the company during a given period of time and at what cost
- Where a particular sales lead is in the sales cycle
- The assets and potential liabilities of certain leads
- The variations in how leads have advanced from the top of the funnel to the close
- More specificity on measurement and ROI
- Tracking between lead capture and sales force automation
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Tags: Database Marketing Blog, Marketing Analytics
Categories: Database Marketing
