Today we’re going to talk about some of the most popular B2B advertising tactics offered by leading industry IT sites, including: Content Syndication Highly Qualified […]
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Today we’re going to talk about some of the most popular B2B advertising tactics offered by leading industry IT sites, including: Content Syndication Highly Qualified […]
In previous posts, I’ve spoken of the value of recognizing Natural contributions to lead volume in the B2B funnel but also promised to spend some […]
Ah, SEO. SEO is like revenue – you can never have too much. We did a little SEO just now when researching the title of this blog. […]
Previously, I talked about assigning a Marketing Channel value to each prospect registration record so that we could compare the Natural (Organic Search, Backlinks, No […]
In previous posts, we talked about the difference between Web and Lead metrics and how you can fill the gap by using cookies to attach […]
The metrics I’m going to describe in the following section come from disparate sources, primarily your Content Management System (CMS), a Web Analytics platform like […]
In previous posts, I talked about putting together the foundation for a Marketing Channel report, one that would show us for the first time not only […]
In our inaugural post, we talked about the birth of the Marketing Channels report, our first look at the true contribution of all marketing efforts – […]
This story begins in 2010, when Nate Otiker joined Quest Software as our Director of Internet Marketing. Nate came to us from T-Mobile and before […]
In previous posts, we talked about the difference between Web and Lead metrics and how you can fill the gap by using cookies to attach Marketing channel information to the lead record that gets sent to your CRM and ultimately, to the sales rep.
Success will depend greatly on the quality of your offer, but let’s assume you put something interesting out there and you’ve got traffic coming back to your Web site. Once we get traffic to the site, we know from industry averages that 1-7% will be willing to fill out an online form.
You can and should track form completions in Google Analytics or another Web analytics system, but as far as quality goes, these records aren’t even close to being ready for delivery to a sales rep. They might include test registrations from your Web technicians, duplicates – which we define as the same person performing the same activity on the same day, and depending on your audience, false identities ranging from Fred Flintstone to French Fries, fully equipped with 555 phone numbers and email addresses that do not resolve.
However, what’s left behind is starting to look interesting. It’ll be a mix of re-contacts, tire-kickers and the true gold, net new prospects.
All of this latter group needs to get to Sales at some point, but it could be that you’ll have to put them through a nurturing program first. That’s where you hold some leads back from Sales and remarket to them through email or more online advertising. The amount of nurturing you’ll do has a lot to do with Sales needs. If you’ve got a mature product and seasoned Sales leaders, it could be they’ll want the filters set to high. If you’re in a startup mode or table model, you might have a larger number of less experienced reps willing to make 100 calls or more per day.
Nurturing programs are particularly critical to B2B marketing programs where sales cycles are longer. They’re also dependent on the nature of the asset that solicited the registration. If someone fills out your “Have a Sales Rep Contact Me” form, it’s probably best not to send that person to a nurturing program, right?
On the other hand, if the prospect signed up for a white paper designed to build awareness of an enterprise-level, platform-level, high-cost-of-switching product, you might want to hold off before have a sales rep contact that person. Instead, you want to make related content offers to that person until they start to think of your company as an information provider in that space and register for something more targeted.
High-quality, net-new leads are like revenue – you can’t generate enough. You’ll see slightly different definitions all over, but in general, Marketers agree that a lead is a registration record where the prospect provided enough valid information for:
Our friends in Sales might say that those are very Marketing-friendly definitions and they would be right. The fact that the prospect gave us valid information doesn’t mean she has any interest in buying our product. White papers in particular generate this type of activity. Many people just want to keep their knowledge up-to-date by reading. If you decide to send white paper leads to Sales instead of Nurturing, be prepared to hear back that the leads are of low quality. Most of the respondents don’t want to talk to a sales rep because they’re just researching industry trends.
For this and other reasons, we’ve found it helpful to use the following sub-types when talking about leads:
An SQL might also be referred to as an Opportunity. They typically mean the same thing; that the sales rep has contacted the customer, evaluated the situation and is willing to estimate the size of the potential deal. In total, the sum of all those estimates is your current Pipeline; all the money that your sales team believes is there for them to go after.
Finance is going to be looking at aggregated pipeline across sales teams and using past conversion models to estimate revenue in upcoming quarters. As a business, your ability to hit those revenue targets will determine shareholder success and ongoing investment.
Depending on the rules your company has in place for managing pipeline – and how late you are in the quarter – that estimate might be very low, very high, or right on target. It’s hard to say until the deal is closed, the most critical and usually toughest task in business.
We’ve covered significant ground in this review so far and have traveled well down the sales funnel. We’re left with the people most likely to convert and even have estimates on what those deals are worth. What’s left? Revenue, of course. As a wise friend once said, “You have to ask for the money.”
Revenue is of course the final measure by which any successful business is managed. Under-report and you’ll be in big trouble with the Board of Directors. Over-report at a public company and some of your Board of Directors might go to jail, which will also be seen as an unsatisfactory outcome.
From a Marketing perspective though, we have to think of Revenue as an outcome of Marketing activities. When you’re reporting on Marketing Success in quarter or in-year, it can prove difficult to tie Marketing campaigns to revenue, especially when – as is the case in our B2B software industry – sales cycles are longer than a quarter or a year.
We solved this dilemma by identifying two methods of Revenue attribution:
We switched to the Opportunity Opened model because it does a better job of tracking the true contribution of Marketing campaigns to Revenue. It does require the patience of your Sales and Marketing leadership teams to trust that campaigns that ran over a year ago are influencing current deals. Moving to a data-driven Marketing model will help you build that trust.
Phew! That’s enough for one day. Thank you for commenting, liking and sharing.
Very comprehensive and insightful! Nice to get a marketing perspective to help a sales mind see the full picture on the sales cycle metrics. Bravo!
Thanks, Jay! Glad you got something out of it.