A personal journey into data-driven marketing
My passion for leveraging data to drive marketing success led me to complete a Level 4 Data Fellowship Apprenticeship with Multiverse. This course illuminated new and efficient ways of delving deeper into both quantitative and qualitative analysis, empowering me to make more informed, data-driven decisions. Here’s my take on how marketing goals and KPI tracking are evolving, backed by some compelling stats from our Global CMO report.
The complex nature of B2B lead generation
B2B customer acquisition is inherently more complex than B2C. Buying journeys are long. It’s not just an individual you need to convince. Decisions are made by a whole buying committee, with a large percentage of deals getting stuck due to a lack of consensus among professionals. These include buyers with product expertise, but also hidden buyers in procurement, legal, and finance departments. These people often hold equal weighting in the approval of B2B purchases. The job of the marketer has now become helping the buyer group to agree.
As a result, marketing goals have evolved beyond just leads, conversions, and sales. Today, they encompass a broader spectrum, including brand awareness, buyer group audience engagement, lead-to-sales ratios, customer acquisition cost, long-term loyalty, and retention. This shift is driven by the understanding that a holistic marketing approach can yield more sustainable growth. Consequently, KPIs are also evolving to reflect these comprehensive goals.
The evolution of a full-funnel strategy
Marketers are moving away from immediate lead generation strategies and adopting a demand generation approach. A successful campaign requires nurturing your audience with thought leadership that aligns with their pain points. Users need to be guided by brand awareness through a journey that builds trust and credibility, with proof points that your brand is an expert in their industry. On average, it takes 10-12 interactions before a prospect is ready to speak to a member of your sales team. Upper-funnel campaigns are vital to achieving this, as they lay the groundwork for the quality of future leads. However, their value is often difficult to convey to business stakeholders who might focus on last-touch leads in isolation. This disconnect creates challenges for CMOs when communicating the true impact of these efforts to their board and fellow C-Suite executives, who may not fully grasp how these early-stage interactions drive results further down the funnel and in the sales pipeline.
Shifting measurement challenges
Confidence has dropped in internal reporting measurements, and attribution is flawed as a concept. There will never be a single source of truth for defining how you’ve generated a deal in complex sales cycles. The way to overcome this is to use full-funnel reporting, with the appropriate KPIs set at each stage that determine how decisions will be made at each step.
Making decisions based on last-touch leads and cost per lead alone will not directly translate into real business impact. Marketers need to track the evolution of brand perception through to business deals and customer acquisition costs, which 64% of CMOs are already tracking. This is the real cost of business results, and if tracked correctly, you will see which channels are really contributing to growth. An important part of this is connecting all your data, which innovative data analysis tools and AI can help to automate.
Implications for paid media KPIs
For paid media strategists, this evolution means a significant shift in how success is measured. Traditional KPIs like click-through rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and cost per lead (CPL) are no longer sufficient on their own. Instead, there is a growing emphasis on metrics that reflect the entire customer journey, such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and engagement rates across different stages of the funnel. Paid media campaigns must now be evaluated based on their contribution to long-term business goals rather than just immediate leads. This requires a more integrated approach to data analysis and a deeper understanding of how paid media efforts influence broader marketing objectives.
So where does this leave us?
The evolution of marketing goals and KPI tracking reflects a broader shift towards a more holistic and data-driven approach. As marketing becomes increasingly complex, the ability to leverage data effectively and align cross-functional teams is paramount. For paid media strategists, this means adapting to new KPIs that measure long-term impact and integrating these insights into broader marketing strategies. By embracing full-funnel strategies, innovative tools, and continuous education, marketers and CMOs can not only prove their value but also drive sustainable growth. The future of marketing lies in our ability to adapt, innovate, and communicate the true impact of our efforts to all stakeholders, ensuring that marketing remains a vital and measurable component of business success.
