When it comes to analytics, it’s easy to get bogged down in the numbers. Just knowing what to track and how best to track it can feel like a full-time job. Then you have to actually do something with all that analytic data once you harvest it.
But, how do you know that you’re coming to the correct conclusions and tracking the right metrics in order to make sound decisions for your strategy?
In today’s B2B technology market, it’s critical that you develop your marketing strategies on well-understood, precisely targeted analytics. There are five data points you should be monitoring in order to make measurable impact with your marketing efforts. Here they are, along with pro tips you can use now:
1. Get More From Your Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs)
Your most successful accounts contain a wealth of marketing statistics that can help you target new customers. They signify expertly executed marketing and sales tactics, delivered to the right audience at the right time.
Pro Tip: Tools like Infer and Engagio go way beyond marketing automation, providing capabilities for market segmentation, predictive analysis, strategy analysis and even campaign execution, all based on metrics derived from MQAs. Not only can these tools help you get a jump-start on your next campaign, they can also be used to show continued ROI for all of your marketing efforts.
2. Give Prospects What They Want
89% of B2B marketers are actively engaging in content marketing1, and for good reason. The people you’re targeting want to self-educate… why not provide them the materials they need so that they hear your message first and build their knowledge base around your facts, opinions and solutions?
Pro Tip: Your web analytics and capture-form data can be used in conjunction to help you develop personalized nurture campaigns. Keep track of who downloads your assets, and then use automated tools to send out personalized follow-up emails that engage with your leads, keep your brand top of mind, and build relationships with those who show an active interest in your content.
3. Test, Test and Re-test Email
Email marketing is widely used in B2B marketing, and for good reason. It’s ranked the third most successful lead generation tool, behind word-of-mouth recommendation and industry-specific intermediary communications2. And with a bit of careful targeting and a touch of personalization, B2B marketing emails enjoy high open and click-through rates.
Pro Tip: If your email open rates aren’t living up to your expectations, try playing with your headlines, pre-headers and content. Use a tool like cosheduler.com to analyze your subject lines, or try personalizing the subject using automated email scheduler applications that tie into your CRM tool. Also, test and re-test your subject lines, email content and assets, and keep track of what performs best.
4. Go Beyond the Click-and-Dwell
With the right tools, your website analytics can go well beyond simple click-and-dwell statistics. You can chart valuable page interactions like entry and exit points on each page, which tell you exactly which of your white papers, blog posts, pages or even page sections interest your audience the most.
Pro Tip: Use a tool like HotJar or Zarget to get a complete picture of user interaction with your website. These services let you observe and analyze user behavior on your site, including clicks, hover, scrolling and highlighting. Additionally, you can conduct A/B testing of site pages, run experiments to gauge user interest, and adjust your content strategy over time based on proven engagement statistics.
5. Make a Positive Out of the Negative (Keywords)
As much as marketers focus on the positive in our messages to market, when it comes to PPC, factoring in the negative is critical to the performance of your campaign.
Pro Tip: When placing PPC ads, use a negative keyword tool like the one offered by Wordstream to determine which terms should be considered false positives. Then, take the time to define these negative terms in your audience filters. By filtering your audience with negative keywords, you end up with fewer false-positives, which means you only pay for impressions that have a higher percentage chance of being qualified leads.
How do I measure success?
Even with the best tools and regular harvesting of metrics, you have to have a goal in sight. It’s important to know and fully understand your company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) prior to conducting regular analytics analysis.
When determining how to gauge your metrics and models against your KPIs, focus on the end-goal of the KPI, rather than the leading edge. For example, instead of focusing on revenue and pipeline, think of funnel conversion. How quickly did your leads move through the funnel? Did they have what they needed at each step? Where do qualified leads fall out of your funnel, and what types of tools do you need in place to reel them back in?
It takes a bit of up-front investment and work, and you’ll have to tune your tools as you gain data points. However, the end result is marketing that delivers not just results, but physical, mathematical proof of the steps that worked in achieving those results.
