Marketing Metrics That Matter

What would you do with a 10% increase in your marketing budget? That’s an easy answer for most marketing managers strapped for resources. We could all hire more people, get the website redesigned, and finally give our Pay-Per-Click campaigns the attention they deserve. But, the most important question to ask is what profits would the increase in your budget generate?

According to a recent study by the Lenskold Group, 44% of marketers have no idea. That’s why Marketo’s eBook “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics” is a welcome guide. And, best of all, is free!

Marketing Metrics Demystified

The eBook is broken down in 4 parts:

Part 1: Accountability, ROI and Framework
Part 2: Revenue Analytics
Part 3: Program Metrics
Part 4: Forecasting, Dashboards, & Implementation

Marketing measurement has been a tough problem to crack. It used to be that we lacked the necessary tools to accurately give CFO’s and CEO’s the answers they wanted and so, marketing was mostly an exercise in faith. Now, with CRM, Marketing Automation, Web Analytics, and other technologies marketers are running out of excuses.

76% of B2B marketing professionals agree or strongly agree that their “ability to track marketing ROI gives marketing more respect.” – Forrester Research

Marketo’s eBook sheds some light into the process of finally being able to measure marketing activities.

Calculating Marketing ROI

As a companion to the eBook they point to a marketing calculator created by the Lenskold Group which lets you tweak your marketing numbers and see how the different metrics affect your overall ROI.

Lenskold Group Lead Gen Online Calculator

But most importantly, they give a useful framework for creating your own marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) and segment those metrics into three different groups:

• Business Performance Metrics and KPI’s: These look at the past, answering the question “how did we do?”
• Diagnostic Metrics: Focus on the present, answering the question “what is working?”
• Leading Indicators: Those forward looking metrics, answer “how will we be doing?”

If you can arm yourself with these set of metrics, you’ll be well prepared for the next time you have to justify your budget to the CEO.

Measuring Your Marketing Performance

The 70-page eBook may seem daunting at first, and it could use some trimming here and there to make it a bit more palatable. If you’re already convinced you need to start tracking results and just want to get to the key steps for doing it, you can skip ahead and start on Chapter 3, A Framework for Measurement.

Filled with examples and suggested metrics, you’re sure to fill up a notebook with ideas and metrics you can use in your own business. The Program Measurement chapter is especially interesting because it brings up typical questions marketers ask themselves when it comes to measuring, like first touch or last touch, lead velocity, and what makes a good control group.

“The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics” – Check it out!