When it comes to B2B marketing, the goal is simple: generate qualified leads that can be handed off to your sales team. The more conversions they get from those leads, the better your efforts are doing.
It’s never that simple, of course.
The problem with only tracking conversions is that there are all kinds of other important elements of your strategy that will tell you how likely you are to generate the kinds of qualified leads your sales team wants. If you ignore them, you’ll always see unpredictable results. One month, your sales team couldn’t be happier. The next, you’re no longer on speaking terms.
That’s why the most successful companies painstakingly track the right B2B marketing KPIs.
7 B2B Marketing KPIs to Measure Your Success
Conversions are the obvious KPI every B2B marketer wants to chase. The same goes for website traffic. We’re taking those two for granted. Instead, we want to focus on the seven B2B marketing KPIs that don’t get nearly enough attention but have the power to unleash your strategy’s full potential.
1. Time on Site
Traffic is great, but you want that traffic to spend time on your site, not take a look around and realize it’s not for them. If that’s happening, you clearly need to make some changes ASAP. This is why the first on our list of B2B marketing KPIs is time-on-site. The longer leads are spending on your site, the better. This is especially true for B2B marketers as it usually takes more information to sell them on your company’s benefits.
2. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate and time-on-site are good examples of why you really need to look at numerous B2B marketing KPIs to get a full picture of how well your efforts are doing.
A lead may come to one of your webpages through Google and spend a good deal of time on it. So far so good, right? The problem is that they don’t look at any other pages. They “bounce” right back off, potentially gone forever.
That’s why you need to address a high bounce rate immediately. It usually means the page in question isn’t inspiring much confidence in your visitors.
3. Pageviews Per Session
So, you’ve managed to lower your bounce rate? Fantastic.
What do your pageviews per session look like?
Again, this is another example of why you have to take B2B marketing KPIs as a whole. A low bounce rate just means that visitors are exploring more of your site before leaving. But what if they simply go to one more page before realizing your company isn’t for them?
There’s no one right average for every company, but typically, the more pages a lead goes to during one visit, the more qualified they are for conversion.
4. Lead Magnet Conversions
Of course, one of the best measurements for this will be the success of the offer for your lead magnet. Do prospects seem interested? If not, it’s time to think of either a different magnet or a better description of yours.
5. Open Rate
Once you have a successful lead magnet, there are two B2B marketing KPIs regarding email that begin to matter. The first is your open rate. Obviously, if your emails aren’t getting opened, you may need better subject lines. However, it may also be that people were disappointed by your lead magnet and therefore aren’t excited about the emails you send.
6. Clickthrough Rate
The next email-related KPI to monitor is your clickthrough rate. Any time you include some kind of CTA in your email, it’s imperative that you see what percentage of your recipients are opening the message and clicking through. Otherwise, those emails aren’t moving the needle much.
7. MQL to SQL
Finally, track how many of your Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – leads your marketing team decided were ready for conversions – become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – leads your sales team deem ready for the sales cycle.
This does two things.
First, it will show you if your marketing and sales teams are in alignment when it comes to what makes good leads. The smallest discrepancy could have massive consequences.
Second, it will protect the marketing team from undue blame. If the sales teams are approving leads for their attention and then aren’t able to convert them, that shouldn’t fall on marketing. Again, some kind of discrepancy needs to be addressed.
One Easy Tactic to Increase Your B2B Marketing KPIs
There you have it: seven B2B marketing KPIs that will start improving your entire strategy the moment you begin monitoring them.
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