Nothing is quite as frustrating as putting lots of time and money into your B2B marketing strategies only to be disappointed by their results.
However, before you go investing even more into improving your funnels, take a step back and conduct an audit first, so you can be sure of what’s wrong.
3 Ways to Audit B2B Marketing Strategies
The only way to consistently improve the ROI on your B2B marketing strategies is to continuously audit them.
Here are the three best ways to do it.
1. Audit Individual Marketing Assets
Today’s B2B marketing strategies may use any number of different assets to generate leads and nurture them towards conversions. Even social media platforms have become extremely popular in B2B industries.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all equally effective, though, which is why you should audit your company’s individual marketing assets regularly.
This seems obvious enough when you have, say, blog posts with no social shares, comments, or clicks. Clearly, that needs to be addressed ASAP, either deleted completely or updated.
A simple content audit could be all it takes to improve your conversion rates, even when it involves getting rid of whole pages on your site.
Where most B2B marketers struggle is assuming that, as long as a piece of content is bringing in leads – no matter how few – it’s doing its job. Marketers put a lot of work into creating these pieces, so they just assume that it’s doing as well as it possibly can.
Even if that was true when it was first published, its effectiveness may drop over the years for countless reasons. If there’s not a way you can improve it now, you may need to replace it with something better.
We recently talked about one of these misconceptions. It used to be that time spent on an asset led to higher sales. This was taken for granted for years until it became impossible to ignore it was no longer the case. Companies that haven’t adjusted or replaced assets designed to increase the time that leads spent on them are going to continue to see funnel problems until they do.
2. Actually Speak – and Listen – to Your Sales Department
It should come as no surprise that one of the most common ways to judge if B2B marketing strategies are working or not is to look at their conversion rate. If you know you’re generating leads, but you’re not seeing new clients, that’s a logical place to look.
Usually, this “audit” involves looking at the sales teams’ numbers relative to the amount of leads the marketing team is generating for them. If there’s a costly disparity, it’s usually assumed that the marketing department needs to be more careful about focusing on qualified leads.
The problem is that the sales department is rarely consulted for specifics. Maybe the leads are qualified, but they’re getting sent to the sales team far too early. They still need some nurturing before they’ll convert.
Maybe the problem is fraudulent contact information, an extremely common problem that often ruins the potential ROI on otherwise valuable lead magnets.
Of course, there could be a number of different issues at play, too. The only way to know for sure is to sit down with the sales department and find out what their experience is with trying to convert the leads your marketing team generates.
3. Understand Sales Velocity
Finally, this next method is absolutely essential to auditing B2B marketing strategies if for no other reason than because most marketers don’t even know what sales velocity is.
Simply put, sales velocity measures the efficiency of your marketing funnel. In other words, not just how many sales your funnel nets you, but what kind of timeframe is involved. This concept is absolutely essential for effectively auditing your funnel because it provides you the most comprehensive view of its performance.
For example, without this kind of perspective, you might think the problem is an insufficient number of leads. So, you start investing in lead-generation without realizing that it’s the average ROI and the conversion rate that’s killing you.
Fortunately, the equation for sales velocity is extremely simple. It’s:
Number of Leads x Average Deal Size x Conversion Rate Percentage
Then, take that number and divide by the average amount of time it takes to get a conversion.
This equation – not just its product – will help you better understand why your results aren’t satisfactory.
Are B2B Marketing Strategies Falling Apart Right at the End?
Finally, if you’ve checked every other box on your B2B marketing strategies but are still losing qualified leads after they visit your site, it’s time to start using Hushly.
We are so confident in our platform that we actually guarantee a 51% increase in lead-generation and ABM conversions. Contact us today to find out why.
