From the moment we launched B2Bbloggers.com, it has been our vision to create a community of marketers actively participating in shaping the future of B2B marketing. In a little over a year’s time, we’ve grown to more than 50 contributors and a community of over 7,500 senior level B2B marketers, CMOs, and agency and company executives. We are so very grateful to all of you.
Today, we’re launching a new monthly B2B expert roundtable series titled: B2B Marketing – In 140 Words Or Less. The intent is to start conversations on the toughest topics facing today’s B2B marketing community. Our goal – shape it’s future.
Our first question starts at the top.
According to Peter Drucker in The Practice of Management (1982), only two things matter in the corporation: marketing and innovation. That is an awfully challenging statement. From your perspective, what is the single most important focus for today’s CMO and why?
Read what the roundtable participants have to say. Then get involved and share your expert opinion.
Ardath Albee – CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions
Excuse the play on words, but I think “innovative marketing” is the primary goal for today’s CMO. We all know the buying process has changed – even more dramatically for B2B than B2C.
By this I mean that instead of focusing on the companies marketers want as customers, they must focus on the people within those companies who have the power to affect the kind of change we can help them achieve.
Innovative marketing in this sense is related to our ability to relearn how to have conversations with the buyer, not as a company, but as individuals sharing expertise with other individuals. The kicker is that most of this interactive dialogue will take place online, rather than face-to-face. That means learning new skill sets and how to use tools for better insights—as well as developing content that drives conversations.
Trey Pennington – Marketing Pro, Business Connector, and Storyteller
There’s often a gap between what SHOULD be and WHAT IS. Reality is, CMOs are forced to justify every move financially, often with a short event timeline in view. No doubt Drucker would be in favor of smart investment of capital, but he would probably encourage CMOs to remember the goal of a business is to create and keep a customer.
Today the money question comes first. Instead the question, “What must we do to create and keep a customer” should take priority. If it did, then the single most important focus for CMOs would be tenacious pursuit of understanding customers. Every action would be measured by, “How does this help us understand our customers better so we can make a meaningful contribution to their quest for significance?” and CMOs would succeed in the long run.
Jody S. Canavan – President, Launch International, Inc.
Today’s CMO is focused on proving marketing’s contribution to driving top-line revenue growth. At the core of that effort is a massive focus on understanding an organization’s sales process and marketing’s role in both influencing a multifaceted buyer’s journey and supporting a complex selling effort.
For years, experts have been talking about bridging the great divide between marketing and sales, but, until recently, we’ve rarely seen organizational shifts to make that happen. Today, CMOs are investing heavily in anything (analysts, consultants, focus groups, etc.) that will help them study their prospects, customers and buying influencers and understand how they live, work and buy.
They’re using that data as baseline intelligence to create everything from brand and solutions messaging to blog posts, airport signage and sales presentations, resulting in a new level of marketing synchronicity that is all but required in today’s complex and technology-enabled world.
Math. The most important focus for today’s CMO is good ol’ fashioned math.
CMO’s need to demonstrate the impact marketing is having on the company’s top line. Soft sciences like brand building are giving way to hard sciences of funnel throughput, pipeline management and lead conversion rates. Virtually every aspect of marketing is now measurable. A great website is no longer determined by the eye of the beholder. Inbound links and search rank will tell you how magnificent your site is – or isn’t.
Customer advocacy is no longer a convenient byproduct of a positive experience. Social media has made customer sentiment as “triggerable” as it is “trackable.” Why will the science of marketing eclipse the art of marketing? Because without revenue there is no business, and without business, there is no brand.
Billy Mitchell – President and Creative Director, MLT Creative
A CMO’s most important focus should be “informed leadership”. The authority implied by the CMO title is meaningless if you don’t lead by example. Today’s marketplace requires a never-quit-learning mindset, especially for you.
Of everyone in the company, you should be the best at telling its story. And you need to have a passion for it. I think that is your job. And it includes challenges too – listening and vision. You have to know more than anyone about your customers, your competition, goals and strategy.
There are now more ways to tell your company’s story than ever. And more ways to gather intelligence. Both outbound and inbound media are ever-evolving and you need to keep up and think ahead.
If you are a chief, you must have a tribe. Lead them well and be smart about it.
Everything about our markets shifted. Successful CMO’s must shift too. Yesterday’s chest-thumping Me Me Marketing, allowing internal teams to define your distinct Value and other you-focused efforts will cause you to crash and burn.
Today’s customers are empowered to find out everything they want to know about you, your competitors and your value – without ever involving you. Now more than ever successful marketing is about your customers; building relationships with your audience, focusing on their real problems and defining Value with your markets –not your product teams.
So ditch the Me, Me Gravity thinking. Get close to your markets – and not just your favorite customers. Get out and chat with the unhappy customer, the one who left you or the prospect who never bought. They’ll tell you more about your Value than those customers you’ve known and loved forever.
Maria Pergolino – Director of Marketing, Marketo, Inc.
The most important focus for today’s CMO should be the imperative for revenue growth – how to generate more of it, more profitably and more predictably.
That doesn’t mean that marketing has to focus only on spreadsheets and formulas. Instead, today’s most successful CMO must be able to balance the art and the science of marketing. Innovation and creativity are more important than ever, but these efforts need to be balanced and well evaluated to ensure the maximum number of sales opportunities are created. By making this the priority, marketing will finally receive the credit deserved as a true driver of success for the organization.
Any CMO whose chief focus is not revenue won’t be CMO for long. If you start with the revenue you need to generate for the company and work backwards, you’ve got your marching orders.
Yes, you must keep an eye on the brand and each step in the customer purchase path, but if an activity is not leading to revenue, it’s off-strategy and if it is revenue-driving, the rest will look after itself.
Christopher Koch – Associate Vice President, ITSMA
CMOs must expand the concept of branding to include personal brands for their top SMEs. Putting short bios and tiny head shots of your SMEs at the end of white papers isn’t going to cut it anymore. Social media have increased buyers’ expectations for intimacy at all stages of the buying process.
Buyers want to “meet” your SMEs before they will listen to them—(e.g., read their personal blog, follow them on twitter, read their comments in an online community). Once they have established this personal knowledge of the SME (with the help of marketing), then buyers will be more interested in reading the whitepapers. CMOs have to start thinking of themselves as paparazzi, complicit in making our SMEs’ personalities and accomplishments as visible online as Britney Spears’ stretch marks.
Wow, right?
To say the least, these responses include some tremendous thinking. What’s your take? Who’s right? Who’s off? How do you answer the question, “what is the single most important focus for today’s CMO and why?”
No matter what area of the B2B market you’re involved with, change is a constant. In order to stay up to date with frequent changes and plan your marketing strategy accordingly, you should utilize B2B marketing analytics. But with the ever-expanding mix of tools and measurements, what are some of the more important trends to look at?
Here are 6 hot trends to consider when planning your analytics strategy:
1. Measuring outcomes – For B2B marketers, it’s all about measuring outcome metrics. Consider some of these business results to measure:
What and how many leads were created?
What and how many sales were converted from qualified leads?
How are you engaging with your customers and what leads are coming from that?
Where are prospects coming from? Social media? Organic search results? Which are converting highest?
2. Integrated search and social metrics – There’s no denying that SEO and social media go together. The benefits of leveraging content distribution and linking in the social web combined with cross linking and keyword use in your content provides both search engine and social web benefits.With the power of search optimized content and social web strategies, you should be sure you are tracking your efforts. A few tools to help with this include:
Google Analytics – A free, but extremely powerful analytics package from Google – this gives you the power to track all your site stats and referral sources, including from social sites. Be sure and tag campaigns appropriately so you’re able to capture all traffic.
Bit.ly – If you are using a URL shortening service to push out links to your content, bit.ly is one of the most widely used. This and most other services include analytics to track how many and who are clicking on your links.
3. Platform-specific analytics – You are engaging prospects on different social platforms inside and outside of your business, but do you know what’s happening? Are you measuring each tweet, blog post or other interaction? When you need to measure your platform specific engagements, consider these tools:
Facebook page insights – Facebook has a built-in analytics system for those that run Facebook pages for business. You are able to get different metrics such as page views, interactions, quality of posts and detailed insights into your fan base.
HootSuite – This tool is an integrated system that allows you interact through different social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and more. It also has powerful analytics as well.
Tweetreach – A simple system that gives you a detailed report of your search term on Twitter. With this tool, you are able to discover your reach over Twitter.
PostRank – This service monitors and collects social interactions with online content in real-time across the web. This is a good one to checkout for a great way to monitor content published on your own blog.
4. Revenue cycle analytics – There is always the pressure to measure your marketing ROI and how marketing programs impact revenue. This data is always changing and to properly measure it, you should leverage revenue cycle analytics.A powerful revenue cycle analytics system will work to touch each of the areas below:
Revenue cycle modeling
Gather information into one area
Planning and forecasting
Executive level insights
Powerful analytics
5. More interested individuals across the organization – Marketing analytics isn’t just for marketers and data crunchers. When you implement a complete marketing analytics solution, more individuals across the organization become involved. When you have detailed, actionable reports and easily accessible data, everyone around the organization takes more of an interest in making data-driven decisions that will elevate results.
6. Greater focus on taking action – Taking action is key in B2B business, but how do you know what to take action on? Most marketers know a focus on taking action is essential, and with proper B2B analytics, you have the information on what to focus business strategies and tactical plans on.
7.Create actionable goals that are realistic – Every B2B marketing forecast has goals and objectives, but how do you know if those goals are realistic?Utilizing B2B analysis, you are able to focus and predict realistic goals for your organization. Some possible goals may include the following:
Improve engagement and conversion rates
Increase organic search traffic to your site
Decrease costs and improve efficiency through the lead management process
Measurement is close to the heart of many marketers, and B2B marketing is no exception. We decided to take on the topic of metrics after it was recommended by several of our #B2Bchat community members.
Here is an edited recap, the highlights of our August 26, 2010 Metrics That Matter in B2B Twitter chat.
Q. What is the biggest challenge companies face when it comes to metrics and measurement?
Not knowing what to measure
Not using the information they gather / not taking action
Understanding how using metrics for measurement, analysis and trending will positively impact the bottom line
Data synchronization across channels
Accepting results are rarely as expected. Creating a learning culture
Tying marketing metrics and measurements to business results
Establishing metrics in new areas such as social media
Q2. If you could only measure one thing in your marketing organization, what would it be?
Cost per lead/ cost per customer acquisition
Lifetime customer value
Customer loyalty / customer satisfaction
Sales from leads generated by marketing
$ spent on each marketing activity – mapped to sales revenue
Return on investment
Q3. How do you best communicate metrics internally? Which medium do you use? How often?
Keep things visual. Use graphs and charts.
Simple is often more effective, e.g. use a white board (if reporting locally)
Taping a graph to the office door (great conversation starter)
Pay attention not only to the mechanics of reporting metrics, but also the context. Is a number good or bad? Should I care?
Internal wiki
Online dashboard, pdf, Excel, and PowerPoint versions
Show metrics compared to benchmarks and targets to put the number in context
Supported by anecdotal evidence and stories of customer wins. – Speak to sales and customers… learn how they found you
Q4. Which marketing metrics does your CEO get to see? Note: This question received a variety of answers, pointing to the fact that there are likely great differences depending on the company’s culture, and company size.
All of them. The CEO reads, ask questions, makes comments.
As few as possible. Keep their eyes on big picture; let units worry about finer details.
Show high level metrics and results that matter to senior exec. Always match against business objectives to show progress.
CEO will look for qualitative data. Is this number good or bad?
The best CEOs are interested in all the marketing metrics. There is always something to learn from.
Typically summaries of activities with results (clickthroughs, replies); more detail when new campaign or new medium is launched.
CEO doesn’t need granularity of Marketing KPIs, but needs those directly tied to forecast.
It will really will matter on the CEO’s background. A former CMO will probably want everything.
Any report to the CEO should be more than metrics. What do the #’s reveal? What’s the next move?
Q5. Have you recently discarded a metric because it was deemed low priority? What was it?
There are many useless things people still measure – e.g. Page Hit, Impressions (without influence) .
Number of followers
Competitor mentions vs corporate mentions, the reason being, too many variables at play
Don’t give as much importance to overall traffic – we all know how to get tons of hits with no results.
A tactic for determining value of metrics to the organization: pull the report but don’t deliver it. See if anyone screams.
Q6. Social Media and B2B. What are the metrics you need to watch?
In general, social media is hard to measure.
Most important are blog stats; Twitter followers, etc. are gravy.
Most important measurement of social media for B2B marketers is conversion rate of visitors drawn to site.
Marketers need to watch rates of follower add-ons over time, drop offs and tie to tweets and other activities of their firm.
Distill conversations/comments into categories based on objectives with -/+ ratings. Also report on influencers vs masses.
Marketers also need to measure “rate” and “direction” of viral activity and look for patterns
Social Media channel to email list conversion
B2B marketing deptartments often measure reach, sentiment and share of voice (and convo)
Track stickiness to other channels to get big picture: events, webinars, mailing lists and regional call centers.
The final word of today’s chat goes to Katie Morse, Community Manager at Radian6. We tackled several specific questions in our session, but this tweet could be applied as an answer to most of them…however you share your metrics, they have to tell a story. #’s for the sake of #’s aren’t usually helpful.
About the B2Bblogger: Andrew Spoeth is an independent marketing consultant who specializes in B2B demand generation. He most recently worked as the marketing director at Enquiro, one of North America’s leading search marketing agencies. You’ll also find Andrew speaking at industry events, co-moderating the weekly #B2Bchat series on Twitter, and blogging at MarketingFinger.com. You can follow him on Twitter at@andrewspoeth.
That has become the marketer’s mantra since modern analytics tools have made it easier than ever to measure almost every aspect of our businesses.
But is a comprehensive measurement strategy the key to success? Absolutely not. It’s only a start.
It is the prioritization, filtering, and internal communication of metrics that lead to ultimate success. Many organizations unfortunately choose measures that have little value, while ignoring those that truly matter.
Join us Thursday at 8pm Eastern for this week’s Twitter chat, Metrics That Matter in B2B Marketing, where we will share our ideas and experiences surrounding metrics. Follow the hashtag #B2Bchat to see the whole discussion.
Q. What is the biggest challenge companies face when it comes to metrics and measurement?
Q. How do you best communicate metrics internally? Which medium do you use? How often?
Q. If you could only measure one thing in your marketing organization, what would it be?
Q. Does your company measure less or more than it did two years ago?
Q. Which marketing metrics does your CEO get to see?
Q. Have you recently discarded a metric because it was deemed low priority? What was it?
Q. Social Media and B2B. What are the metrics you need to watch?
I’d like to leave you with another thought. In his latest book titled Crush It!, author Gary Vaynerchuk takes a position which is almost diametrically opposite to the “measure everything” philosophy, telling us to trust our instinct over detailed numbers:
I use analytics very rarely and I urge you not to rely too much on them either, especially if you’ve got good business instincts. A lot of times the stats and percentages related to my business just don’t support what my instinct says is true, and I’ll trust my instincts over numbers every time.
Do you agree? Where do you sit in the continuum between instinct and “measure everything”?
Join us for this week’s #B2Bchat on Metrics That Matter in B2B Marketing, Thursday, August 26th, at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.
About the B2Bblogger: Andrew Spoeth is an independent marketing consultant who specializes in B2B demand generation. He most recently worked as the marketing director at Enquiro, one of North America’s leading search marketing agencies. You’ll also find Andrew speaking at industry events, co-moderating the weekly #B2Bchat series on Twitter, and blogging at MarketingFinger.com. You can follow him on Twitter at@andrewspoeth.
How do B2B marketers tackle the question of marketing campaign value? Do we make strategic decisions based on real, actionable data?
With the firehose of data that is available to marketers now-a-days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the information that truly matters. And this is especially true for B2B with their typically complex, drawn out sales cycles.
In our latest episode of #B2Bchat, we dug into questions surrounding metrics. Here is a summary of the questions and comments, compiled:
Q. Which components of your digital marketing campaigns are delivering the best results? E.g. Search, Email, Display Advertising, Social Media?
Search (PPC and SEO). These are most effective when in used in conjunction with great landing pages.
Email
Mediums are secondary, success depends on the contextual relevance of the message.
Q. Why do campaign budgets get cut? Poor performance or lack of tracking?
Both: poor performance due to lack of clear objectives. and lack of tracking because no analysis properly done during campaign
Most of the time the problem is poorly defined goals and metrics
Budget cuts can also come due to lack of well defined baselines.
Lack of commitment to the campaign. Unreasonable expectations of sales impact.
On social media budgets: Shyness with social media due to it being unproven, thus high risk. Execs are holding back.
Measuring metrics a science, but knowing how to explain them can sometimes be an art. e.g. convincing your boss to keep budget.
Q. What is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to marketing reports?
First Dashboard reports need to be customized (management level) and meet biz needs…focus on actionable metrics!
A lot of people over-do it with reports. Too much data and too complex = danger of focusing on wrong metrics.
Q. How do you assess the value of a digital marketing campaign? Where do you start?
Have specific goals and objectives
Start with the dollar value of new sales and work backwards
Measure the number of sales-ready leads and wins
A good marketing dashboard is fundamental
Q. What metrics (Key Performance Indicators) do you track? Which matter most?
“Actionable” metrics, data which will allow us to make better decisions and take action
PDF downloads, newsletter subscriptions, sales leads, e-commerce transactions
Word art of transcript from April 29 #B2Bchat – Measuring the Value of Digital Marketing (courtesy of Wordle.net)
About the B2Bblogger: Andrew Spoeth is an independent marketing consultant who specializes in B2B demand generation. He most recently worked as the marketing director at Enquiro, one of North America’s leading search marketing agencies. You’ll also find Andrew speaking at industry events, co-moderating the weekly #B2Bchat series on Twitter, and blogging at MarketingFinger.com. You can follow him on Twitter at@andrewspoeth.
Attribution… measurement… return on advertising spend… cost per lead… These are buzz words that marketing executives love. And they are ones that also keep them up at night.
How do B2B marketers tackle the question of marketing campaign value? Do we make strategic decisions based on real, actionable data? With the firehose of data that is available to marketers now-a-days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the information that truly matters. And this is especially true for B2B with their typically complex, drawn out sales cycles.
In our next #B2Bchat session, we’ll open up the discussion on measuring the value of digital marketing. Here are some of the questions we’ve collected:
How do you assess the value of a digital marketing campaign? Where do you start?
What metrics (Key Performance Indicators) do you track? Which matter most?
Which components of your digital marketing campaigns are delivering the best results? E.g. Search, Email, Display Advertising, Social Media?
Which attribution model(s) do you use? First click? Last click? Blended model?
Who is responsible for collecting the data? Agency? Internal staff?
Why do campaign budgets get cut? Poor performance or lack of tracking?
Do you use a reporting dashboard? If so, how often do you revisit the dashboard?
What is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to marketing reports?
How has your company’s internal reporting evolved over the past two years?
Join us for this week’s #B2Bchat on Measuring the Value of Digital Marketing, Thursday, April 29 at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.
About the B2Bblogger: Andrew Spoeth is an independent marketing consultant who specializes in B2B demand generation. He most recently worked as the marketing director at Enquiro, one of North America’s leading search marketing agencies. You’ll also find Andrew speaking at industry events, co-moderating the weekly #B2Bchat series on Twitter, and blogging at MarketingFinger.com. You can follow him on Twitter at@andrewspoeth.
B2B companies, especially those that are not web-based businesses, tend to be late adopters of social media. This has been my personal experience, as Firetide’s social media efforts started less than a year ago (although I had participated in LinkedIn groups for longer than that).
Many companies only have perfunctory efforts – they have twitter accounts, for example, but update it infrequently or don’t engage with their followers. Given that we are early adopters (funny to say that given that social media been the rage for years, it seems) we still have to justify the time and effort allocated to social media efforts.
So the Social Media Measurement #B2Bchat was in part exchange of tips and insights, and in part a venting session – which everyone needs every now and then.
Some highlights from the session.
As a B2B marketer, how do you justify time spent on social media? Are there any detractors within your organization?
I was surprised to hear from one participant that “Day of having to justify SM to anyone is over.” This has not been my experience. I suspect that in many B2B companies social media is still flying under the radar, and needs to “come out of the shadows.” So there will still be adjustments as social media gets fully integrated into marketing plans, and stops being a skunk works project. Many comments confirmed my impression:
I just make the time for it. There are a few detractors in my company, but most support our SM efforts.
Some are quick to be detractors: tend to be expecting too much, or not taking time to understand.
I view SM as an extension of ‘traditional’ communications – advertizing/PR, so weaving it into our regular mark. programs
I have spoken to some, who do see fear of unknown and lack on control to be concern.
B2B is all about relationship building during long sales cycle. Social media is a great way to build relationships.
I can link revenue directly back to my social media contacts/time. Dramatic increase year to year.
What are social media’s practical benefits, even for companies who do not monetize their web sites?
The responses varied from lead conversion metrics (from those lucky enough to have a closed-loop lead tracking system), to better understanding he industry landscape and listening to conversations, market intelligence and building personas.
SM gives the users a chance to interact with you as a business/product. It’s a big plus.
Looking at SM as extension of PR, I track mentions, engagement, as well as briefings & other PR opps secured through SM
Maintaining/monitoring brand perception in real time is an advantage, awareness of enthusiasts/critics comments = opportunity
A step above brand monitoring is establishing credibility as an industry expert.
Competitive/market intelligence is a huge advantage that SM brings; gets rid of ‘tunnel vision’
SM for a small biz helps to level the playing field; leads to interaction with industry pros – as long as you provide quality content
The last observation was especially interesting to me; you don’t need to have a huge PR or ad budget to know what is happening in the industry, and you can engage with the influencers directly. In addition, having the first-mover advantage, you can establish a position in social media and stand apart from the crowd.
Do you know the impact social media activities have on your brand awareness?
There was no easy answer to this question yet, so many of us have to rely on qualitative feedback.
You do if you set GSOT (goals, strategies, objectives & tactics) at start & keep scorecard two track progress.
Awareness is a measure of total reach and increase in reach online. So yes through analytics that can be determined
Brand awareness can be measured and tracked to some extent; but crucial to establish a baseline from which to measure
It can be difficult to measure, particularly for small businesses without resources and access to high powered apps or 3rd party software
Social Media ROI question is tough. BUT, what’s the ROI of having a telephone? Or email?
Without question, SM lets small companies and startups compete with vastly larger firms.
Do you generate leads with social media? If yes, how do you track them?
We track leads from SM by using Google Analytics and unique URLs.
We do a lot of content registration: Webinars + white papers through Facebook & Twitter. 5-10% of registrations come from SM.
SM for our company has been key for building awareness. Our web analytics show SM as top referrer.
We assign a unique URL to each tweet and then track inbound clicks all the way to a lead or other success event.
What are the tools that even companies without social media budgets can use to track impact of their social media presence?
Trackur; Google Alerts; even Tweetdeck are great measurement tools (or combination thereof)
For tracking twitter engagement over time: @twitalyzer & @klout
PostRank is a great way to tie social media with blog performance.
Great SM measurement tools being mentioned: PostRank, Twitalyzer, Klout, Rowfeeder, Trackur, Radian6 (although a later commenter said “Radian6 is a great sm product, but I don’t have $’s for it.”)
If you are using an existing web analytics package, you can use APIs like the Twitter search/REST API to grab data on buzz.
What are the objections you encounter regarding social media initiatives? Any tips for overcoming them?
This was more of a venting session as I mentioned early. It surely felt good!
Biggest obstacle I hear about is security and inertia
The age old challenge in B2B = tying SM to revenue. Yes, it’s a cliché at this point.
Do I have the resources in time, $ & people to make it work? It is a relevant concern.
Ah, the famous question: ‘What if they say something bad about us?’ Answer: ‘Then you have a prime opportunity for conversion.’
Internal objections when starting SM initiatives? “Our clients don’t use SM.” “It’s a time trap.”
I have a client that would love to tweet if they could do so to a controlled audience. [Classic!]
“We don’t have time to do SM right.” “Our B2B customers aren’t using SM.” “CEO won’t like negative feedback.”
Another challenge is the perception that social media is cheap and does not require any specific knowledge and expertise.
So, even as it may seem that social media is a given, many B2B companies are still in the early adoption phase, and are grappling with associated challenges. The dialog helped bring them to light.
As one of the participants said: “Social media is an amplification of the conversations that are happening anyway.” With social media you have the opportunity to participate, rather than staying on the sidelines. Jump right in!
About the B2Bblogger: Ksenia Coffman is senior marketing manager at Firetide, a wireless infrastructure mesh company, where she is responsible for Firetide’s marketing strategy and technology solution partnerships. Her articles on wireless infrastructure appeared in various publications, including Security Products, Law & Order, SecurityInfoWatch.com and Communications News.
An ASIS member (an international association for security professionals), she is a frequent speaker at industry events, including ASIS workshops and IWCE conferences. Ksenia launched @Firetide – with 800+ followers, it’s is one of the most active Twitter accounts in physical security and wireless infrastructure space. You can read more from Ksenia at Mesh Without Wires blog.
With wavering executive buy-in and the desire to satisfy our own curiosity for the return on our time, we’re all looking for practical social media measurements for our B2B marketing efforts.
What’s your approach? That’s the topic for this week’s #B2Bchat, Practical Social Media Measurements For B2B Marketing.
With no best practice defined to date, let’s learn from one another. Many of us are still grappling with how and what to measure, especially in these days of tight budgets and limited resources. Some questions we will cover:
How do you justify time spent on Social Media?
What are the practical benefits, even for companies who do not monetize their web sites?
Do you know the impact SM activities have on your brand awareness?
Do you generate leads with SM? If yes, how do you track them?
What are the tools that even companies without SM budgets can use to track impact of their social media presence?
What are the objections you encounter regarding SM initiatives? And tips for overcoming them.
Join us for this week’s #B2Bchat on Practical Social Media Measurements For B2B Marketing, Thursday, April 23 at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.
About the B2Bblogger: Ksenia Coffman is senior marketing manager at Firetide, a wireless infrastructure mesh company, where she is responsible for Firetide’s marketing strategy and technology solution partnerships. Her articles on wireless infrastructure appeared in various publications, including Security Products, Law & Order, SecurityInfoWatch.com and Communications News. An ASIS member (an international association for security professionals), she is a frequent speaker at industry events, including ASIS workshops and IWCE conferences. Ksenia launched @Firetide – with 800+ followers, it’s is one of the most active Twitter accounts in physical security and wireless infrastructure space. You can read more from Ksenia at Mesh Without Wires blog.
A B2B social media strategy should include a conversation calendar. Your conversation calendar lists the media and frequency of all your social media activity. The conversation calendar acts as a dashboard of your owned and earned media and the number of posts anticipated per month.
Image courtesy iStockphoto
The conversation calendar is especially helpful if you’re a B2B marcom manager who’s enlisting the help of other colleagues in the social media program. It makes it easier to assign social media to various colleagues and lets your colleagues know how much time to budget for their social media activity.
Your conversation calendar also gives you an idea of the volume of content required to support your social media program. It’s a lot more than you think! But before you become overwhelmed, read Ardath Albee’s advice on b2b content development. Ardath explains how to leverage your existing B2B content to keep up with the demands of a social media program.
Aside from its use as a planning tool, your conversation calendar can also be used with your social media monitoring program. Compare your activity on the conversation calendar to the number of mentions in the social sphere to get an idea of the impact of your social media program. You may find that you need to adjust the frequency of activity or completely drop under-performing activity from your program.
A simple spreadsheet is all you need to create your B2B conversation calendar.
Do you have another way to manage your social media conversations? Tell us here…
About The BtoBblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
I asked a number of my B2B Marcom colleagues how they’re measuring social media. The answers were varied, but all agreed that anyone involved in social media should measure results, and the metrics will depend on your objectives.
For B2B considered purchases, social media is just like all other B2B marketing communications—there’s not necessarily a direct correlation to a communications such as blog post and a sale. Instead it’s the aggregate impact of integrated marketing communications that drives engagement throughout the buying cycle and ultimately a sale.
Manually mapping trends in social media activity to sales trends.
Let’s say you have a 180-day buying cycle. You would track the number of social media mentions/activities (tweets, social bookmarks, blog references, etc.), white paper downloads, video views, webinar attendance, followers/fans. Then, plot these on a trend chart, and do the same for sales. See if there’s a connection between social media activity and sales activity, particularly within the 180-day buying cycle. You’ll also want to note any other Marcom activity during this same period such as trade shows and events and ads.
Yes, this takes time, but it’s the only way to prove to ROI-conscious executives the value of your social media investment. Although your initial success metric may be tweets, followers, mentions, etc., these metrics don’t equate to dollars unless you can draw a correlation to sales.
Tools to help you monitor social media activity… especially the organic activity that results from good content?
Many of my colleagues started out by using free tools and a good old-fashioned spreadsheet to manually track media mentions, social bookmarks, comments, videos watched, etc. Tools such as Google alerts, Twitter search, socialmention.com and Topsy.com can help you see where you’re mentioned and what’s being said. In addition, you can search Technorati and the blogosphere to listen to what’s being said.
Depending on the scope of your social media activity, you may need to graduate to professional tools, which are fee-based, but offer greater capabilities and automation to more closely monitor your social media activity. Here’s a sampling of social media monitoring tools such as Meteor, objectivemarketer.com, Radian6 and PR Newswire’s MultiVu. You should also check with your web metrics provider. Several web metrics providers also offer social media monitoring add-on services such as <Alterian and Omniture.
Caveat about social media ROI
Social media by its nature is about building and cultivating relationships, which takes time and involvement in the social media sphere. If you’re looking for a social media quick win, then you’ve completely missed the point and should avoid social media… it may do more harm than good. Look at it this way… Do you measure the ROI of every single sales call, even though most don’t result in a direct sale? And do you only count the last foot in the door as the call that really made the sale, ignoring the numerous other visits, face-to-face meetings, etc. that may have influenced the final call? Probably not… you’re looking at the total cost of sales and the revenue it generates.
I think social media ROI should be handled in a similar way. You may need to look at the aggregate affect of social media along with the other elements in the marcom mix to determine ROI. ROI won’t be immediately visible for social media in most B2B considered purchases due to the length of time it takes to cultivate relationships. It’s kind of like trying to measure the ROI of a brochure.
About The BtoBblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at www.jdamico.net or through her blog www.integratedmarcom.blogspot.com.
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About The BtoBblogger: Joan is a B2B marcom consultant and copywriter with more than 15 years experience helping high tech and industrial companies generate leads and sales through integrated marketing communications including SEO copywriting, social media and website content. She can be reached at 
