For B2B marketers, lead generation and management is a top priority. If you don’t make sales, your company will cease to exist.
There is a well-known quote from John Wanamaker, who was a pioneer in business and marketing: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Today, this quote continues to ring true, with many marketers failing to implement lead generation metrics to understand which tools and marketing strategies create the results. Many marketers struggle with managing different strategies and tactics to attract not only new leads … but also the right kind of leads.
In the crowded and noisy digital environment, marketers are looking to build lead generation campaigns based on metrics and specific data. According to the recent Marketing Sherpa 2013 Marketing Analytic Benchmark Report, 66% of surveyed marketers report that acting on data to improve marketing performance is the most important objective for marketing analytics in 2013.
Sales and Marketing Integration
Sales and marketing rely on each other to drive results. Creating and assigning responsibilities, common goals and shared objectives is the start of determining the right balance of marketing activities for building business revenue. As the engine of the sales cycle, lead generation programs need to identify requirements from both the prospect and the sales team perspectives.
Similarly, CEOs can get upset by the number of sales leads that get ignored by the sales team. Following up with leads as soon as possible to nurture interest in the company is an important part of converting and qualifying new leads.
With better integration of sales and marketing, companies not only achieve better internal communication but also realize higher ROI from their lead generation programs. Such synergy helps organizations:
- improve internal communication
- reduce expenses for both sales and marketing
- develop better accuracy regarding sales revenue
- cut the time in the sales cycle
Sales Complexity
When it comes to a complex sales cycle, the sheer number of people, requirements and interactions can have a significant impact. It’s not as simple as a traditional sales funnel. Careful campaign management and tracking is difficult, but is important for understanding lead management.
Cause and Effect
As Malcolm McDonald and Peter Mouncey point out in their book, Marketing Accountability: How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness, it is critical to take a holistic view when it comes to measuring marketing performance. It’s not as simple as measuring an equation: input + productivity = output. Output can be measured only when a lead converts to a contact. Take a longer term view with your marketing tracking and analysis.
Time and Resource Allocation
Most B2B marketing specialists understand the importance of tracking data to generate insights. They understand that effective marketing campaigns can help shorten the sales cycle by targeting messaging to specific pain points. Although most marketers have analytic data, often they do not use it effectively, due to lack of time and resources. Create and test integrated marketing campaigns on a smaller scale before rolling them out to your database. It will help you determine which campaigns have the greatest possibility for lead conversion.
Determining the right metrics for your lead generation programs is based on understanding what needs to be measured and the purpose, frequency and importance of the metrics relative to other metrics. Take the time to analyze your data to get valuable insights. These views can become the benchmark for future marketing campaigns. You’ll be glad you did.
