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METRICS MATTER
A B2B GUIDE TO FINDING REAL MARKETING ROI
The technology industry is ever-changing with pressure from inside to produce meaningful business results
and from outside to stay relevant with engaging content. When paired with the massive amounts of data
being collected each day by B2B companies, these pressures are both a blessing and a curse for tech
marketers. The challenge is in finding out what works best and scaling that to do less, better. At the same
time, significant shifts are happening within this landscape:
Customer >>> Customer is in control across B2C and B2B markets
Channel >>> Continuous growth in new channels and platforms
Product >>> Shift from product to service
Technology >>> Constant developments, updates, and innovations
Competition >>> Newcomers disrupt the market and unseat businesses seemingly overnight
Today, there are more problems for marketers to face but also more
opportunities using marketing technology, data, and analytics. At the end
of the day, something has got to give—that usually means sacrificing quality
for quantity, or vice versa. Marketers must adopt a more proactive approach,
shifting from short-term solutions to a ‘big picture’ understanding of their
business.
The critical question isn’t “what’s next?” but “what now?”
By looking at what is working today and developing integrated, adaptable
marketing programs, technology marketers can eliminate low-performing
efforts and focus on delivering results for tomorrow. A clearer direction, one
focused on past successes and most-effective marketing efforts, is the path
forward in this complicated and uncertain world.
M E T R I C S M A T T E R :
A B2B GUIDE TO FINDING REAL MARKETING ROI
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 1
Technology cycles are moving so fast, the competition can come out of nowhere and eat your lunch in a month.”
Russell Glass, Author of “Big Data Driven Business” and Vice President Products, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 2
ENTER: DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING
Data enables marketers to develop clear priorities and separate the essential from the non-essential. Knowing
what to “proactively subtract” from the never-ending list of marketing possibilities is key. Many marketers get
lost by focusing on channels, technology, and/or leads as the starting point(s). Instead, marketing must pivot
180 degrees from focusing on what they think is important to what the data indicates.
This marketing pivot is about engaging real people with real needs and aligning
the business around them. Data helps us understand what is most relevant to ‘real
people’ so that marketers know where to prioritize their time, dollars, and marketing
efforts. Businesses can then start (re-)connecting with the right people with specific,
time-sensitive needs by developing campaigns built around these customer
experiences.
The result?
Less chaos. Sharper Focus. Increased relevance. All of this enables marketers to drive more meaningful and
measurable results at scale. By doing less better, marketers can actually achieve more.
LINKEDIN DATA: REAL NEEDSThe things that strengthen a client/vendor partnership may surprise you:
Personal RelationshipsTrust Responsiveness
Quality Improvements
TheValue for
the Money
REVEALING RESEARCH BusinessOnline and LinkedIn partnered to explore this notion of how to find REAL marketing ROI. Armed with
insightful LinkedIn research on marketing in the B2B tech space, we conducted candid 1:1 discussions with
20 senior B2B technology and software marketers from some of the most respected brands including AT&T,
Brocade, Dell, and others, to uncover how today’s top technology organizations are breaking old habits and
embracing a new marketing approach that boldly focuses on doing less to achieve more. We drilled down into
the specifics of what sets apart today’s leading technology marketers, including how they tackle the big
questions of big data, what innovative approaches they are using, and how start up and enterprise tech
companies can get on board. We uncovered some startling and provocative insights and aim to share these
pragmatic solutions for B2B technology marketers.
LINKEDIN DATATech marketers state Lead Generation is the 2nd most important type of market-ing, while it ranks #5 of what they’re actually engaging in( LinkedIn Tech Marketer Difference )
KEY INSIGHTS
10% get it, 90% are immobilized. Only 10% of the marketers we talked to feel they are “getting data-driven marketing right”; the remaining 90%
are completely immobilized for two different reasons:
• 45% are frozen: “we know we need to do it better, but struggle to get started”
• 45% are unconvinced: “we are skeptical about the need for leveraging data”
Disrupt yourself. B2B technology marketers are in the business of marketing services and experience, regardless of industry or
product. They need data to help them see what’s coming and act on it before it’s too late. Disrupt yourself or
be disrupted.
Gut and Instinct. Data alone doesn’t paint the full picture; the most effective data-driven marketing incorporates gut feel and
human instinct. Eighty percent of marketers said a key priority was driving sales, leads, or both — tasks which
tend to have a short-term outlook. At the same time, 55% said a top priority was increasing customer loyalty or
retention which is often measured by customer lifetime value and tends to take a longer view (https://business.
linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/b2b-beat/2016/b2b-beat--cmos-find-customer-centricity-difficult-to-im-
plement).
Invent from scratch. There is a dearth of exemplary role models and business cases to facilitate learning; marketing today is
complicated and being crafted anew from a blank slate. Think: test, learn, iterate, repeat – similar to how
the tech industry approaches product innovation.
Data-Driven Culture. The glaring obstacle in adopting a data-driven marketing approach is the cultural shift needed to make it
feasible. Data-driven business crosses and helps to break down silos, functions and boundaries and is led by
marketing. Recent studies have shown that talent is the prerequisite for building B2B brands and drivers of
customer-centric growth.
In a complex and dynamic world, the marketer’s way forward is to know what to do and what not to do. Or as we say: Do less, better.
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 3
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 4
Kevin Carrillo, Lead Website Manager, Networking Exchange, AT&T
Mike Kim, Field Marketing and Demand Generation, Cohesity
Joan Fitzpatrick, Assistant Vice President, Global Sales Productivity, NetSuite
Holly Stephenson, Director of Demand Generation, Teradata
Naomi Miller, Group Vice President, Rimini Street
THAD KAHLOWThad Kahlow is the CEO of BusinessOnline and is considered an authority in B2B marketing. His visionary leadership style has helped propel the company into the online marketing spotlight making BusinessOnline one of the nation’s leading B2B marketing agencies. His philosophy fosters a focus on the alignment of business goals and user needs so that clients can make business decisions guided by data that truly matters. With more than 16 years of digital marketing experience, Thad is a seasoned professional who maintains fresh and forward thinking insights
into winning strategies that skillfully align business goals and solutions.
KELLY KYERKelly is the Global Director for the Technology Vertical, and in her role, leads the go-to-market strategy for LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions and Elevate products in the technology sector.
Kelly’s career spans a variety of arenas, but has been primarily focused on B2B and technology. Most recently she was with global industrial giant, Grainger, where she directed their creative and content marketing efforts. Prior to Grainger, Kelly spent 7+ years with technology reseller, CDW, where she
was responsible for marketing communications.
AUTHORS
Tom O’Regan, Chief Executive Officer, Madison Logic
Jeff Siegel, Enterprise Global Demand Gen. Strategist, Dell
Lisa Skinner, Senior Director, Demand, Localytics
Charles Studt, Vice President, Marketing, Redbooth
Will Vasquez, Manager, Demand Creation, Citrix
HEATHER BERGGRENGlobal Thought Leadership
& InnovationEnterprise Solutions Group
RUSSELL GLASSVice President,
ProductsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
DAYLE HALLVice President,
MarketingLithium Technologies
CHRISTINE HECKARTChief Marketing Officer
Brocade: Storage & Networking
AMANDA KAHLOWChief Executive Officer
6sense
BRAD RINKLINChief Marketing Officer,
Senior Managing DirectorEze Software Group
ENRIQUE TAPIAGlobal Marketing Director
Dell
THANKS TO CONTRIBUTING THOUGHT LEADERS
Data is a formidable force. It is the catalyst to doing less, better — objectively, clearly, and prescriptively. Businesses
that leverage data’s insights, power, and promise reap significant rewards. “Data is the great – and
objective – clarifier,” observes Thad Kahlow, CEO of BusinessOnline. Consider this powerful illustration of getting
to better marketing by doing less:
A large hotel chain had been measuring their marketing success based on total campaign results. So when a seasonal
promotional campaign to 3,000 of their most loyal customers achieved 100% of revenue, the hotel chain considered it
an immediate success. However, when they disaggregated the data, they discovered that a mere 40% of recipients
generated 94% of the revenue, highlighting a 60% waste in outreach dollars spent. In other words, the hotelier could
have done and spent much less -- 40% of the budget -- and generated the same revenue results. Armed with this data
for subsequent campaigns, the hotelier wisely re-allocated those budget dollars and better aligned new campaigns with
customer subgroups, providing more compelling offers and engaging loyalists with more apt, personalized, relevant
content.
This is at the heart of why data is the great clarifier and enabler of how to “do less, better.” Yet the business world is
littered with cautionary tales of companies that ignored data’s call. In his recent piece, aptly titled “Data Can Be a
Matter of Corporate Life and Death,” Russell Glass, Vice President, Products with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, points
out Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Blackberry as two examples of near-death corporate experiences. “If
a company ignores customer data showing a trend that could fatally wound it, it’s likely that the company will be
wounded and that the wound will be fatal,” warns Glass. Without the objective insights of data, marketers are flying
blind. As Brad Rinklin, Chief Marketing Officer of Eze Software states, “Without data you have to throw it against the
wall and see what sticks. We don’t have that luxury any more as marketers.”
The good news is even companies that crawl can make huge strides. Research has found that for a Fortune 1000
company, increasing data accessibility by just 10% has the potential to result in more than $65 million dollars in additional revenue (Baseline).
Ultimately, it is data-driven marketing that will separate the leaders from the losers, the survivors from the corporate
fatalities.
C H A P T E R 1
DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING CAN MAKE OR BREAK A BUSINESS
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 5
Highly skilled analysts turn data into actionable insights and help trans-late marketing results into smarter marketing choices. Data analysts are the lynchpin to on-going marketing optimization.” Thad Kahlow, CEO, BusinessOnline
The irony of data’s guiding clarity to “less” is its complex and vast nature. Navigating complexity requires a level of
sophistication many marketers have yet to develop or acquire. Today, marketers face a plethora of data sources,
volume, and velocity, as well as channel and technology choices with no end in sight. The majority (84%) of
marketers believe that the level of complexity faced by marketing professionals over the next 5 years will be high
(55%) or very high (29%).
Yet, marketers have only begun to scratch the surface of data’s potential. Most B2B companies (yes, even tech) are
woefully – and admittedly – behind in mastering data and insights to maximize results. In fact, a remarkable 60%
of marketers report they are “still operating at 1990 levels of analysis and understanding;” while 42% admit having
difficulty extracting insights.
C H A P T E R 2
THREE SECRETS TO DEMYSTIFYING DATA
The antidote is having the right resources to connect disparate data
sources, and extract and create actionable analysis. Properly scrubbed
and analyzed data, specifically data analyzed through the entire
buying journey, can better guide and re-direct marketers to optimize
the channels, strategies, and content that will most effectively bring
customers and prospects into the pipeline. There are three secrets to
demystifying the complexity of bringing a data-driven marketing
mindset to the organization and distilling insights that will allow
marketers to focus on what to do better (and what not to do).
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 6
42%Difficulty
extracting insights
13%Too much
data
12%Resources,
Time
23%Fragmented,poor quality
data
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 7
SECRET #1: DATA REQUIRES PEOPLE Data is a three-legged stool. It takes the people, processes, and technology to deliver the actionable insights
marketers need. “Marketing without analytics is dead,” says Enrique Tapia, Global Marketing Director, with Dell.
And data analysis without people is all but impossible. Without the expertise of data analysts – individuals who
are highly skilled at interpreting data and making recommendations – data will fail to provide what is most
essential for digital marketing efforts to succeed: relevant, actionable insights that prove and improve market-
ing ROI. Dayle Hall, Vice President of Marketing at Lithium Technologies concedes, “People are a big part of this
process and it’s hard to find them – but [it’s] the most critical step in being customer and insights-centric.”
When the right team and resources align, that’s when the magic begins. Just ask Heather Berggren, Global
Thought Leadership & Innovation - Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. “We have found that leveraging our data
and insights (business intelligence) in conjunction with interesting data from publishers (marketing intelligence)
and predictive experts (customer intelligence) is the best answer to deliver the right content at the right time
to our customers. This combination of data brings us relevance and engagement at scale so that we can inform
sales with the insights they need to more effectively engage with customers.”
CASE IN POINT:
Bringing in data experts often comes down to an in-source/outsource decision. For example, a large home
improvement brand recently sought to prove its “offline to online” ROI in order to validate marketing’s influence
and justify the next year’s budget, but lacked adequate in-house resources to conduct a proper analysis. The
company turned to an outside agency with proven expertise in data analysis and insights. The agency’s first step
was to run a deep analysis of client data, including product profit margins, sales by store/week, etc. Then they
designed an A/B test and helped the company run a pilot campaign. Through its data analysis tools, the vendor
was able to prove a 78% ROI during the test, which represented a 218% lift vs. pretest. This partnership gave the
brand the ammunition it needed to advance along the learning curve and build future data-driven campaigns.
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 8
SECRET #2: CHECK YOUR GUT AND INSTINCT Even with unlimited data, data tools, data analysts, and channel experts at a marketer’s disposal, the human
element remains vital. Because in the end, consumers – regardless of B2B, B2C, tech or manufacturing – are
people, and marketers need to interpret not only what the numbers are saying, but also what their experience
and intuition are telling them about how to connect with those people. Both qualitative and quantitative data
is important – not only do you need the numbers you see in your analytics tools, but you need to talk to your
customers and prospects.
“You can lead with the data, but you also have to do a gut check,” says Lisa
Skinner, Senior Director, Demand Generation at Localytics. “Ask yourself
‘Does this make sense to me?’ before you make a decision because that’s
what the data tells you to do.” Naomi Miller, Group Vice President at Rimini
Street agrees. “Big data is not an exact science. It has to be part of the mix,
but it’s not something you can rely on totally.” Mike Kim, Field Marketing and
Demand Generation at Cohesity takes it even one step further calling into
question how much technology a marketer really needs: “With all the
technology we’ve brought in over the last few year, how much better are
marketers at reaching people? New technology helps, but it is not a stand-
alone panacea…and marketers aren’t even utilizing technology to its fullest
potential.”
CASE IN POINT:
Brocade masterfully tapped into the human element of marketing to
customers with its wildly popular “On Second Thought” campaign. With
a research-based understanding of their customers’ daily frustrations in the tech sphere, Brocade created a
campaign of bold, simple, fun cartoons that gave a humorous voice to those frustrations and cleverly positioned
the company as a wiser, smarter, better choice upon “second thought” by its customers. Brocade strategically
placed the ads on social media platforms, like Twitter and LinkedIn, the
watering holes where its customers are engaged. To date, “On Second Thought” has been one of the best
performing B2B campaign on LinkedIn, exceeding both LinkedIn and Twitter’s engagement benchmarks by
3x-10x. The campaign succeeded because Brocade used data to reveal insights about their customer, then
relied on creative instinct to tell the story.
There is an art and science to data. But you need a balance between experience and the data. If I made every decision throughout my career just based on data, I would have made way more mistakes than I think I have so far.”
Lisa Skinner, Senior Director, Demand Generation, Localytics
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 9
SECRET #3: CULTURE, CULTURE, CULTURE It is worth repeating three times, because optimizing the volumes and value of big data requires a data-driven
mindset and buy-in throughout an organization, even at the highest level. It is the only way to become a
customer-centric company, a shift that has become paramount to creating a competitive advantage and
business longevity.
Jeffrey Siegel, Enterprise Global Demand Gen. Strategist with Dell, explains, “In order to do data-driven
marketing right, you have to breed the culture in marketing around data and analytics. It requires an
appetite for failure at the highest level and the freedom to explore new things. Culture drives behavior. If you
don’t have a corporate culture driven by leaders that allow you to adopt and adapt the many data tools and
processes out there, it isn’t going to happen. People will go back to their tried and true ways, or slant data to
support their own beliefs.”
CASE IN POINT:
When Dell set out to build a data-driven culture, its leaders took the charge. An executive steering committee
for data and analytics, consisting of four vice presidents from the business and its chief data officer, set the
overarching goals and agenda for how the organization would use data company-wide. This set the stage for
creating a company-wide cultural shift. With a rationalized set of metrics in hand, Dell was well positioned to
start making data-driven decisions based on valid, true, governed data rather than metrics for success
established by the sales organization.
Who better than marketers to embrace the change and take the lead? As inherent innovators, marketers can
model the agility and potential of data, demonstrate success stories up the chain, and begin to reinforce a
systemic culture of customer-centric, data-driven marketing. The onus is on CMOs to invest in tools (like
Data Weld, Domo, and others) and training that make more analytics accessible to everyone on the team,
from technical to non-technical, thereby fostering a culture that empowers people to use data.
The evidence of a data-obsessed culture paints a clear picture. According to Insights 2020 led by Millward
Brown Vermeer, of top-performing businesses, 80 percent link everything they do to a strong sense of purpose
– and 79 percent have an employee base that fully embraces that sense of customer-centric purpose.
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 10
Data and instant metrics have created a perfect opportunity for marketers to measure, just about everything from
channel to funnel – click-throughs, cost per click, site traffic, average page views, impression rate, conversion rate,
cost per lead, cost to acquire a customer, lifetime value and on and on. While these data points are helpful, they are
most valuable when assessed and scrubbed for their insights (or the “so what?”) and for the audience who will use
them. This is where less is more really comes into play.
By focusing metrics based on the audience receiving those metrics together with the goals of the business, market-
ers can cut through the noise and craft a solid showcase of marketing’s value. Consider the most relevant metrics at
three primary levels in a company:
C H A P T E R 3
METRICS THAT MATTER
Executive and C-Suite (non-marketing functions)At the highest level outside of marketing, metrics that matter the most are the ones that
demonstrate marketing’s value to the business. Here, marketing leaders should focus on
presenting bottom line metrics that speak to overall business goals: revenue and ROI. Second
tier metrics (that drive revenue and ROI) are customer acquisition and retention. Metrics
based on predictive modeling are understandably compelling to executive decision-mak-
ers. “With predictive, marketing efforts can be tied to source pipeline and source revenue,”
explains Amanda Kahlow, Chief Executive Officer, 6sense. “This helps add clear attribution for
marketing efforts so that reporting can be crisp, compelling and fact-based.” Sharing the core
metrics that demonstrate marketing’s role in generating revenue and ROI will add credibility
and value. Doing less, by eliminating the finer, more detailed data points on channel specif-
ics, segment drill-downs, etc. will help bolster marketing’s role with the C-Suite and help sup-
port the case for data-driven marketing. For the C-Suite, think big picture and bottom line.
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 11
CMO / Marketing LeaderMetric reports to the CMO should answer overarching key questions that tie to marketing’s
impact on revenue and ROI as well as customer trends. Consider how marketing is improving
customer acquisition, growth and retention rates and trends, and how customer segments
perform by campaign types, offering categories, channel choices as well as industry-specific
metrics that matter to a business. Armed with these metrics, the CMO can then determine
how best to optimize the marketing portfolio of investments to improve ROI, to test new ideas
and to drive more revenue per dollar spent. Joan Fitzpatrick, Assistant Vice President, Global
Sales Productivity with NetSuite affirms this: “If we see that certain
data-driven marketing strategies drive leads and deliver results, we absolutely will increase
our spend to drive future success.” And the corollary is true—do less, better by decreasing
spend in activities that are not delivering revenue results.
At the CMO level, a weekly review of detailed, intermediary metrics is not necessary. However,
marketing dashboards that roll up metrics and allow for ad hoc drill-downs into detail are an
excellent tool for CMOs who are placing bets with focus, resources and investments. Metrics
serve as the catalyst for marketing to become an agile, and increasingly valuable, function
based on objective measurements – and one where testing, learning and improving iteratively
are the new way of operating.
Marketing TeamThe structure of the marketing team will dictate which specific metrics matter to which team
member; however, cross-sharing of metrics will help cross-channel learning for the entire
team. At this organizational level, intermediary metrics such as click-through rates, open
rates and conversions by channel, customer type, offering, campaign, etc., are most relevant.
To organize this data and present it in “real-time”, marketing dashboards are key. Further,
detailed marketing dashboards are must-have tools for marketers responsible for optimizing
within customer segments, the offering portfolio, and across/within channels and platforms.
Without customizable, current dashboards, marketers are just guessing and often doing so
with high stakes and lackluster results. This prevents marketers from objectively subtracting
non-performing investments from the marketing list of to-do’s, thus perpetuating the cycle of
doing more but getting less.
For AT&T, an audience-driven focus on metrics is a winning strategy. “We let the metrics pro-
vide insights most meaningful to our various stakeholders and use that to inform strategy at
every level,” says Kevin Carillo, Lead Website Manager, Networking Exchange, at AT&T.
For marketers self-identified as part of the “immobilized 90%”, it is important to understand that doing less within
a data-driven landscape is a journey. With the overabundance of channels, apps, devices, and technology available
today, the temptation is to try to do it all, be everywhere, and measure and report everything to show progress and
generate new leads each quarter. But it is becoming crystal clear as this new world order evolves that making fewer
choices and focusing prescriptively leads to much greater success. Begin here.
1. START SMALLThe first step is the most important, and most difficult, one. An effective way to get initial momentum is to take a
small, initial step and expand slowly from there. To move forward, try a test vs. control pilot campaign. Engage a data
analyst’s help, then choose a targeted customer segment, such as brand loyalists or high value customers and select
a specific campaign with measurable, time-bound goals, one or two channels, and set up the pilot. The test campaign
will utilize data to more prescriptively target the message to the audience or to find higher-probability prospects and
the control campaign is “business as usual.” Run the campaign and compare results of the data-driven test with the
traditional approach. This provides an initial proof point from which to build and establishes a test-and-learn
approach – the catalyst to getting mobilized and the foundation for doing less, and doing better.
2. LEVERAGE ANALYSTS What does success look like? What are you measuring and what will it reveal? What is the insightful story that data
can tell you? Who is the data informing and for what purpose? Data-generated insights hold different meaning and
value depending on your specific goals and who is viewing them. For example, a brand marketer may be far more
interested in the reach of their campaigns, while a direct response marketer is focused on metrics like cost per lead
and lead volume. In order to capture the rich insights that data provides, an analytics resource needs to be in place
to set-up the test vs. control campaign, select the statistically balanced customer groups, collect and analyze the
results and generate reports that inform and instruct and suggest the next step. Need analysts? Partner with an
in-house data analyst or find an outside vendor to locate the right resources to do this. Begin to understand the
power and potential of data, what and who it requires, the potential uptick on results and interpreting the rich
insights to set the marketing compass as your data-driven journey forges ahead.
C H A P T E R 4
HOW TO START DOING LESS
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 12
3. SCALE AND EXPANDOnce you have proven the value of a data-driven approach in an initial campaign pilot, it is time to expand. Add
one or two variables for the next campaign and expand the customers targeted. Use the insights to create more
accurate customer profiles, find look-alikes in your customer base or prospect base, target new channels and/or
find more relevant offers based on what was derived from the pilot. As you learn more and prove more from your
efforts, you begin to tackle the inevitable data-driven hurdle. This slow, build-up along the journey helps make
data-driven marketing manageable, feasible and foundational for a culture of agility and iteration. This is a new
frontier for marketers and most businesses but is requisite for the next frontier of companies that are disrupting
long-standing businesses overnight.
IN CONCLUSION — WHAT NEXT?Unquestionably marketers today face more challenges with more mar-tech solutions at hand. But something has
to give—that usually means sacrificing quality for quantity, or vice versa. In this atmosphere of “more,” however,
it is imperative for marketers to embrace data-driven marketing to achieve laser-like clarity and focus on the most
effective marketing strategies and by dropping the lower performing ones in a culture that nurtures doing less,
better. Only then can marketers carve a clearer path to future success.
Metrics Matter: A B2B Guide to Finding Real Marketing ROI 13