If you own a B2B company, the marketing data that your company collects is undoubtedly one of its most valuable resources. If you don’t know what matters your company’s data can seem like a disorganized mess of information that is difficult to analyze for valuable lead metrics. Your metric focus may also change as your business grows through traffic, leads, and sales. To help you make the most of your data and start leveraging it to achieve more B2B conversions, look at a few of the most important metrics to track throughout your marketing campaigns.
Note: As you grow, it is essential to update your tracking as data comes in. Start with conversions and then optimize for what supports those conversions. Here are a few of the data points that you can look at as a B2B company.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great way to gauge how well your business is doing at any point in time. Through the Google Analytics dashboard, you can find your specific traffic stats and pageview information such as session duration, bounce rate, and how long visitors stay on your website (down to the exact page). This is a powerful tool that can help you make the most out of your marketing efforts. B2B organizations should understand how to use Google Analytics and implement these data metrics that make conversions. If you can only do one thing, this should be it.
Sources
Sources of traffic are lead metrics that help your team understand where your traffic originates. These are vital to learning more about your target audience and how they interact with your brand. Google Analytics is a great way to find where your traffic is coming from, be it another website or an ad you’ve placed. You can also see the geographical location of those reading your content. Knowing the lead metric source allows you to tailor your messaging for qualified leads and optimize your ad spend.
Audience Ad Reach
Once you know the audience, how they interact with your website, where they come from, and what they’re looking at, you can refine your approach to attract the leads you want. Your lead metrics may indicate that you’re attracting traffic that is poorly qualified. Only through detailed analysis will you understand whether your message is landing with the right targets. If you find that the wrong audience is consuming your content instead of your target, it’s a signal that something needs to change in your campaign. Audience ad reach can be measured using the ad resources tools. Your targeting can then be confirmed by combining this information with what you will learn from analyzing keywords.
Keywords
If your marketing efforts are attracting the wrong audience, keywords could be the problem. The content message in your ads, on your website, and even on social media are vital to conversions. Keywords are an essential tool for controlling who will see your information. It would be best to research your industry and competition to get a list of successful keywords that lead to sales. You will know if your keyword plan is working by the data you’re capturing with Google Analytics. If you’re not ranking or getting the clicks you need, your keywords may not be bringing the right quality of traffic to your website. Keyword optimization is an ongoing process. What you want to rank for and what your ideal target audience is searching for can be completely different.
Conversions
Make sure you’re getting familiar with these acronyms: CTR, CRO, CPC. They are critical to understanding your marketing strategy and where your conversions come from. The Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ads are receiving. This is another way to see if you’re reaching your audience. Cost per click (CPC) is another metric that can help you determine if your strategy is working within budget and converting the leads you want.
In the beginning, you will need to try campaigns out. After you have done some research, written copy, ads, and chosen images it’s time to try things out. This is where you start conversion rate optimization (CRO) – the process of optimizing your digital marketing strategy to provide a positive customer experience and qualified leads.
If your goal is to increase your B2B conversions, then MQLs & SQLs are the most important lead metrics to track. MQLs – marketing qualified leads – are where a visitor becomes a lead and moves from TOF – top of funnel – to MOF – middle of funnel. You need to get that first conversion so you have permission to market your message to them personally. SQLs are defined as the leads that are ready for a sales conversation. These leads may convert through personalized email messages or on solution-specific pages on your site. By tracking leads through your advertising and analytics, you can focus your marketing efforts on those most likely to convert to paying customers.
Successful Content
When it comes to search engine optimization, quality content is king. Watching what content your visitors are consuming longer – time of page metrics – will determine if your creative content is resonating with your target. In addition to helping you rank higher, well-written and compelling content can also help position you as an authority in your field and improve the credibility of your brand. Thanks to the incredible value that it brings, the success of your content marketing efforts is certainly worth keeping track of. Metrics such as impressions, engagement, conversions, and SEO performance can all be used to examine whether your content achieves its full potential.
Accelerate Your Marketing Success with a Data-Driven Approach
Your company’s data is a treasure trove of untapped potential. The most important thing to consider if your business has plateaued and needs effective, targeted marketing to scale. By viewing the vital lead metric data outlined above and using a centralized dashboard to keep track of them throughout your various marketing campaigns, you can start leveraging a data-driven approach that is sure to take your B2B marketing efforts to new heights.