Part 2: How Do Your B2B Data Analysis Practices Measure Up?

The basic concept of marketing has not changed much since its inception during the industrial revolution but how we market has drastically changed over time. With the introduction of the digital age, we have seen a rise in the number of marketing channels, tactics and strategies you can use to target your audience and an increase in the tools we use to measure the success of campaigns. If you and your team are not analyzing your efforts, you may be losing out on valuable information and new sales.

In part two of this series, we explore the importance of collecting and analyzing the metrics from your campaigns to help shape your next steps, evaluate your messaging and inform your customer profiles.

Importance of Analysis

As you start to think about the tools you are using to generate interest, sales and awareness of your brand, product or service, it’s important to remember that it’s not just about having a presence but about monitoring the success of that presence. In today’s market, most companies know to look at email open and click-through rates but digging deeper can give you useful data that can guide your next steps. An Accenture survey found that 61% of B2B transactions start online. In that same survey it was reported that 58% of organizations treat social media as one of their go-to research channels to find vendors. Therefore, if you are not capturing your data accurately on these platforms, you could be losing insight into these valuable leads that start online.

To further expand on the importance of capturing and analyzing data, Accenture’s study also found that 40% of companies not achieving their revenue goals didn’t know their click-through rate. 34% of companies not achieving their revenue goals didn’t know their open rate. And 74% of companies that weren’t exceeding revenue goals did not know their visitor, lead, MQL, or sales opportunities.

Regularly monitoring and analyzing your marketing presence can better inform basic performance questions. What tactics are working? Which ones are not? Who do you retarget? How do you retarget? Which are the leads that should be escalated to phone calls or more personal interactions? An abandoned cart or a lead who visited twice may just need an extra marketing push to the next level. 

Analyzing data is not just important for the end of a campaign but also during the campaign for retargeting and course correction, as well as overall planning and determining which methods work best. As you map out your marketing campaigns, strategically set baseline goals and plan when you will evaluate how each component is performing against those metrics.

Another essential reason to monitor data is to see which messages and content are resonating with your audiences. Analyzing the success of your promotions and campaigns gives you insight into the mind of your customer. The results of each push can better shape your customer profile and help you define key messaging points for future interactions and the overall customer journey. Analyzing messaging will help you start personalizing your marketing efforts, which has become a key component of marketing success.

For guidance on personalizing your marketing efforts, check out the Personalized is Profitable presentation.

The Right Tools for the Analysis Job

There are many free ways to monitor audience activity. Google Analytics is one of the most popular ways to monitor website activity. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all have a metrics overview page for business accounts. 64% of B2B marketers generate leads via LinkedIn, 49% via Facebook and 36% via Twitter, so utilize those free tools to capture your leads and activity. You can also leverage premium tools like Pardot, Marketo and HubSpot to help capture a more in-depth breakdown and analysis. If you haven’t yet committed to a B2B marketing automation tool, find out the benefits they bring for your investment. In a sea of software, you can also find useful resources to help compare these different tools and determine which suits your needs and budget. 

Be Data-Informed with Your Leads

In the last few years, you have probably heard the term data-driven superfluously used in many different markets. While being data-driven is important, being data-informed is the key to success. Quality data and knowing how to apply it is vital. It helps you understand how your campaigns are doing, what is working and where your audience is finding value. Answers to these questions can help guide you to your next steps.

Want ideas on how to maximize your CRM to create meaningful customer relationships and referrals? Check out our How to Transform Your B2B Customers into Advocates article. 

While data is essential in planning and analyzing your campaigns, you don’t want your team to lose creativity or have paralysis by analysis. Over analyzing can hurt campaigns as much as under analyzing them. Ensuring that you are setting tangible goals, have the right tools in place to measure that data, and are using those tools correctly, should eliminate running too many non-essential reports and over-analysis.

While you are reevaluating your CRM and analytics habits, check-out Top 5 Sales Funnel Clogs for more ideas to examine common areas that can lead to jams in the pipeline.

Need some assistance with a full audit of your marketing automation tools and other key marketing services? Request a free 1:1 consultation with a Launch Marketing expert today!