Where marketing has an image problem in B2B organisations, it’s often – at least in part – down to how it reports on its activity to the wider business.
Although most departments – finance, sales, operations and the like – report closely to the commercial realities of the business and demonstrate a direct impact on the pounds and pence, that’s not always the case with marketing. This means that whilst there’s a lingua franca amongst the leaders of the business that’s (quite rightly) focused on the money, when marketing doesn’t speak this as fluently as other teams it compounds the perception of them as the colouring in department.
Speaking the local dialect when it comes to reporting your worth month to month goes a long way to solving this. After all the FD typically doesn’t entertain the idea of logging social media likes on the balance sheet, but is likely to take notice if marketing has the cold, hard evidence that it’s been the driving force behind an increase in sales.
So how should marketing reporting be structured? We think there are three key areas.
Show me the money
The brass tacks of the situation is that to be worthwhile, marketing needs to either directly or indirectly influence more sales for your business. So cut to the chase and structure your reporting around this. You don’t have to be working at the sharp end of ecommerce to do this – one of the benefits of many B2B sectors is that you’ll be targeting buying units, rather than sole individuals, at large organisations. So align your targets here with how the SQLs and MQLs you’re generating are supporting wider commercial goals such as growth in a particular industry vertical or with a large customer.
Get real with MQLs
The poor MQL has a tarnished reputation. It’s now used so widely for any possible marketing datapoint that in some businesses it’s become virtually useless as a metric. Little wonder there’s often such scepticism amongst the sales team if they’re being sent “leads” that have been classified on the basis of a few cursory interactions. In fact, some studies reckon as many as 70% of the leads marketing pass to sales are simply ignored due to a lack of trust between the teams.
But when done right, the MQL is a highly valuable measurement for marketing. Focus it closely on purchase intent as well as the purchase eligibility of your audience and it will help to demonstrate the pipeline marketing is building.
This should be supported with engagement and interaction monitoring and analysis leading up to the MQL threshold being triggered.
In tandem with good SQL definitions it will also provide conversion rates that can help to pinpoint successes and problems in the segue into sales; including where the problem lies beyond the control of marketing.
Don’t forget metrics from further up the funnel
The final piece of the jigsaw is the stuff that, reported on in isolation, is where the wider business feels alienated from marketing. But creating broad reach with the right audience remains key for campaigns that aren’t focused solely on ABM; the stronger the awareness and mental availability created here, the more efficient the demand generation activity later down the line.
So it’s important to make sure you have a clear view of how and where reach is being generated. This should be coupled with share of voice (SOV) and excess share of voice (ESOV) reporting that allows you to understand how your efforts stack up against the competition. ESOV is particularly useful given it’s proven links to business growth, and is therefore a great way to demonstrate the commercial value of awareness raising activity to non-marketers. You can read more about ESOV in this article – although its focused on PR monitoring, the ideal is for ESOV to be used across all marketing channels and this is how it was first conceived.
Good reporting = good internal PR
Getting marketing reporting right is crucial not only for you to properly understand the ROI you’re getting from activity – it’s also key to making sure the wider business has a positive understanding of what your team does.
Ensuring you have a clear thread running from commercial objectives right through the customer journey will go a long way to ensuring that perceptions of marketing move away from the crayon set.
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