As a business leader, having a marketing strategy is an important part of your lead generation engine, which in turn is directly related to your ability to generate revenue and grow your business.
But strategy for its own sake is pointless; how you go from strategy to action is a much tougher assignment. Strategy needs to inform a planned set of tactics that are executed over time.
Measuring and reporting the effectiveness of these tactics and adapting your campaigns accordingly is critical to running an effective lead generation "engine" and hitting your revenue goals.
Business leaders are used to getting this clarity from the head of sales and the firm's CRM system. Now they must insist their marketing function steps up to the plate and provides similar data for the early and mid stages of the funnel.
So how do you track your marketing effectiveness at generating leads?
How many times have your Marketing and Sales teams locked horns in a he-said she-said heated discussion around lead volume and quality? It is critical to create shared goals and metrics and keep each team accountable to one another.
Set goals for your marketing team using these conversion ratios as a benchmark of current performance, and then systematically improve percentage conversion rates to increase the velocity that you run your funnel. Improving conversion ratios at each stage should be a priority.
Measuring the impact of your content can be difficult - but never fear, it can be done, with the right offer.
Offer an informative piece of content – an eBook, whitepaper or webinar – in exchange for personal details. It should be educational in nature if your visitors are merely seeking to learn more about their problem. As they progress in their journey you can feed them content about how well you solve said problem.
It all starts with your landing page. It’s no secret that first impressions are lasting impressions, so to improve conversions, you need to provide a positive experience for your visitor. Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for and in return they will supply their details. Your marketing automation software should track the effectiveness of each landing page.
Quick Tip: Track your keywords! How well are your keywords performing in search, specifically related to your business? Use the data gathered to produce similar and stronger content offers to help your goals.
Marketing qualified leads are ready to talk with your Sales team. Your success will be determined by your ability to conclude which leads are ‘hot-property’, and are most likely to purchase your service or product.
Note: Guiding your lead through the middle of the funnel by to becoming a qualified lead using powerful, relevant, valuable content will generate a strong and trustworthy relationship.
As you might imagine, it's critical to invest in a good set of tools to generate the data that you need to systematically measure and subsequently improve your lead generation effectiveness.
Look for tools that are "all-in-one", as trying to create one source of the truth between multiple tools can quickly become a major headache.
Equally ensure you are able to easily and automatically pass data between your CRM and your marketing automation software.
If you're interested in measuring the success of your current B2B marketing, take our free health check and see how you measure up!