Marketing Metrics for Business & What They Mean
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Marketing analytics allow us to track the effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts. The various metrics can tell us what is working, what’s not, and what changes are needed.
For B2B businesses, we usually look at marketing metrics in two categories: acquisition and behavior. Basically, where are leads and prospects coming from, and what do they do with a piece of sales or marketing collateral.
Here are a few of the most common marketing metrics in each category and what they mean.
Acquisition Metrics
Acquisition metrics will tell you where new leads and prospects are coming from. For a website a few popular acquisition metrics for a B2B website are:
Number of New Users: how many new people have visited your website
Organic Search Traffic: how many sessions were started from a search; rather than going directly to your site
Referral Traffic: how many people come to your website through another source, like through a link on another domain.
What They Mean
If one of the marketing goals was to increase brand awareness, then an upward trend on these metrics would indicate that marketing and sales efforts were working. In contrast, stagnant or declining numbers would show an issue.
Behavior Metrics
While knowing where we get our leads and prospects is essential, the other piece of the puzzle is just as important—how they interact with that marketing. Behavior metrics tell us just that—how our audience engages with a piece of sales or marketing collateral. Some popular behavior metrics for B2B websites are:
Engagement Time: how long visitors stay on your website during each visit
Engagement Rate: how much of your audience interacts with your content
Conversion Rate: the percentage of people who completed a specific action you designate as a conversion (ex., submitting a form).
What They Mean
If one of your goals was customer education, then the conversion point may be clicking on a blog article. In addition, longer engagement times would indicate users are spending time reading those articles. An upward trend of these metrics would suggest that we are positively moving towards our goal. Whereas short engagement and low conversion rates would indicate a need for a change.
Using Metrics to Achieve Your Marketing Goals
These are just a few of the metrics, along with very simplified examples. Your unique goals will dictate what metrics should be monitored and what changes should be made to boost the effectiveness of your marketing.
Have questions about what metrics are right for your business? Contact us to meet with our team of marketing experts.