Understanding and tracking the performance of your marketing efforts is essential in order to grow your business. While there are dozens of metrics you can use to measure the success of your campaigns, some are more important than others. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of the ten most important marketing metrics that everyone should be aware of, and most likely tracking on a weekly basis.

(Before we dive in, if you want a shortcut to building your growth marketing scorecard that tracks all of your most important metrics in one place, you can steal our growth marketing scorecard here >>)

With the understanding that every business is different, and a couple of these metrics might not make sense for you to track, here are the top 10 metrics most Heads of Marketing should track:

#1: Unique Pageviews

Unique pageviews measure how many times a webpage has been visited by individual users over the course of a designated period. This metric helps you understand which content resonates with your audience and how often they view it. It also provides insight into user engagement and helps inform decisions about what kind of content to prioritize in future campaigns.

#2: % New Visitors

% new visitors measures how many unique visitors have come to your website for the first time during a given period. This metric is helpful in understanding whether or not you’re successfully reaching new audiences with each campaign and can help inform decisions about where to allocate resources for maximum impact.

#3: Video Watch %

Video watch % measures how often people watch a video all the way through, as opposed to how many times it’s been viewed or clicked on. This metric gives you an indication of user interest and helps inform decisions about whether or not your audience is finding value in your videos or if they’re being ignored.

#4: Click Through Rate (CTR)

CTR measures the number of clicks on a particular link compared to the number of impressions (how many times that link was seen). A high CTR indicates that users find the link interesting enough to click on it while low CTR numbers suggest there might be improvements needed within the content itself or its placement within a webpage or email message.

#5: Open Rate

Open rate measures how often people who receive an email open it, as opposed to leaving it unread in their inboxes, also known as “opens” vs “bounces” rate. Understanding this metric helps marketers decide whether their messages are engaging enough for readers to take action on them and can help inform decisions about subject line wording, email length, and other aspects related to emails sent out through campaigns.

#6: Leads Generated

Leads generated measures how many individuals expressed interest in learning more about a product or service by taking an action such as filling out a form or signing up for an event. Tracking this metric is important for evaluating the effectiveness of various channels and campaigns used for lead-generation activities.

#7: Revenue

Tracking total revenue generated from campaigns provides insight into overall performance and ROI from those efforts. It also helps marketers understand which channel offers more significant returns so they can adjust their strategy accordingly.

#8: Number Of Lead Magnets Downloaded

Lead magnet downloads measure how many individuals downloaded a valuable piece of content offered by a company in exchange for contact information such as name, email address, etc. These metrics provide insight into user engagement with various lead magnets created by organizations so they can evaluate which ones resonate best with their target audiences and create more effective strategies going forward.

#9: North Star Metrics Performance

North Star Metrics are one high-level key performance indicator (KPI) designed to keep organizations focused on achieving their long-term goals regardless of short-term successes or failures — measuring performance against these metrics paints an accurate picture regarding progress towards achieving desired results over time.

#10: Upsell Take Rate

Upsell take rate measures conversion rates when customers are presented with opportunities to purchase upgraded versions/features after purchasing initial products/services — understanding this metric helps companies identify areas where they could improve customer experience and increase the chances of customers taking advantage of upsell opportunities available.

The post Top 10 Metrics Most Heads of Marketing Should Track appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Are you managing a B2B business that needs more leads?

If you’re still reading this, I bet you’re nodding in agreement.

Everyone needs more leads, and hence everyone needs a more effective sales funnel.

New Challenges B2B Businesses Are Facing

As the web-based marketing is growing and maturing, so do both challenges and opportunities for B2B businesses.

On the one hand, more and more brands need services, so there’s definitely a growing demand for B2B businesses, especially now that the COVID-triggered digitalization is disrupting the global economy.

Experts are realizing this and have started monetizing their personal brands by providing services. Hence the fast-growing competition.

As the competition is becoming more complex and diverse, so do B2B customers.

In the B2B sector, there always were several decision makers involved. What is changing is the structure of decision-making units (DMUs). These days there are many more people involved—an average DMU grew from 4 to 7 people in two years.

A DMU typically consists of several people including the marketing manager, the business development manager, the brand manager, etc.. Obviously, each of them will have different needs which your marketing strategy should address.

At the same time, the B2B buying journey is becoming less predictable and more complicated. It is claimed to have become twice as long in 6 years and I am pretty sure it grew much more in 2020 when online marketing has grown exponentially.

So the question arises. How do you generate and convert leads in today’s rapidly evolving marketing climate?

There are, of course, many ways: from re-focusing your services to meet new needs, to creating more content to generate leads organically. And yet, there’s one fundamental step just about every B2B business needs to take care of prior to taking another action:

Optimize your sales funnel.

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Here are a few tools that can help:

1. Diversify Your Lead Generation Methods

Have you noticed your old lead generation methods losing their efficiency? You are not alone. If 10 years ago a simple contact form on your “Services” page was enough to get links (provided there was any traffic coming to that page), these days web users seem to be developing web form blindness.

Web literacy is growing, and so do privacy concerns. It’s getting harder and harder to convince your site visitors to share their email with you and agree to getting contacted. Here are a few ideas for you to diversify your lead generation methods:

Chatbots

With Artificial Intelligence on the rise, there are quite a few solutions allowing you to easily create a smart chatbot which will be sending your site users down the sales funnel.

By answering their questions and sending them relevant links, a smart chatbot will always be there where it’s needed, helping your site visitors navigate your site more confidently so they trust you with their contact information.

Appointment Scheduling Software

Some leads may not even need to become leads. Shorten their buying journey by allowing them to become your customers right away, i.e. let them schedule a meeting with you without requesting one.

Appointfix is one of the easiest and most affordable tools allowing you to create on-page CTAs that lets site users schedule an appointment and get confirmed right away:

AI-Powered Surveys

Somehow people like taking polls and even quick surveys, especially if they expect to see the answer breakdown in the end. This makes surveys a great lead generation method.

AI-facilitated online surveys convert your site users into leads even more effectively by identifying when each individual user is more inclined to engage and which topics will catch their attention.

Traditional Lead Magnets

Content strategy should include diverse content types targeting all different people within one decision-making unit. Normally, a decision-making unit consists of various executives like the managing director, the head of marketing, and of the head of sales.

Naturally each of them will have their own needs from any product. An effective content strategy should address this divergence in organizational and personal priorities of each persona inside a DMU. Customer-facing lead magnets include:

• demonstrations
• whitepapers
• customer references
• webinars
• videos
• value assessment tools
• product brochures, etc.

Visitor Identification Software

Finally, not all site users will entrust you with their contact information. But they can still become a lead. Maybe the timing was wrong, or that site visitor was distracted, or maybe that’s just the wrong player inside this DMU.

You can still catch many of those leads by using visitor identification software. These tools collect your site logs and identify companies behind many of them.

Invest in Paid Lead Generation Methods

While on-site (i.e. “inbound”) lead generation tactics should be your priority, using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter ads will expand your reach and accumulate more data for you, so don’t miss this step! Social listening is another great step to take.

2. Collect and Nurture Leads Automatically

The sales process normally consists of hundreds of micro-tasks performed by dozens of sales people. It is a nightmare to organize and manage effectively.

Luckily, there are new tools coming to the market that allow you to keep things well-organized and streamlined by applying artificial intelligence.

Exceed.ai is one example of this innovation in action. The platform uses artificial intelligence to engage your leads in personalized and contextual two-way conversations based on CRM data, recent actions and nurture stage. In a nutshell, this is a virtual assistant that works alongside your team to independently assist, qualify, nurture and convert your leads.

Where sales reps may give up or simply overlook things, Exceed picks things up and engages your leads with human-like conversations. Once the AI assistant has qualified a lead for a sales call, it schedules the call for the lead with the relevant rep, again, saving precious time wasted on back-and-forth to set up meetings.

Obviously, there will always be a need for human intervention, but Exceed helps to make that intervention more efficient by making those leads better qualified and more inclined to become your customers, thus increasing your reps overall productivity and success rates.

3. Optimize Your Sales Funnel Using A/B Testing

Conversion optimization is a process which is never finished. You will always look for new ways to design your pages and optimize your flow to achieve better results. This is where constant A/B testing and adjusting comes into play.

Finteza is a web analytics solution that makes sales funnel monitoring and A/B testing doable without investing a separate team to do that.

Conclusion

As more and more companies are permanently switching to remote working, the B2B sector is growing fast. This is a good time to start offering services or launching a SaaS project, and with the tools listed above you can also generate leads and convert them into clients pretty quickly. Good luck!

The post 3 Tools to Build an Effective B2B Marketing Sales Funnel appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

By now, you’ve probably heard us talk a lot about lead magnets. But just in case you’re unfamiliar, a lead magnet is an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect or visitor in exchange for their contact information. Let’s break that down…

There are a few VERY key words in that definition: Specific and Value

Specificity is absolutely key when developing a great lead magnet. You don’t need to create some broad ultimate guide or white paper (in fact white papers are generally terrible… they feel like homework). Instead, you want to offer something that solves a specific problem. 

This makes the content highly consumable and even more targeted. 

Think about it—what if you created something like an org chart template? There’s an incredible amount of value here. It’s a done-for-you template/swipe file AND it tells you that your customer likely has a team. Win-Win.

Value is the other important ingredient in the lead magnet recipe and this is twofold. You want the perceived value to be HIGH and then you need the actual value to be as high. If you’re marketing something that sucks, then you’re just going to convince someone you suck faster. 

In our YouTube series, Marketing Mastery with DigitalMarketer, I talk about my 5 favorite types of lead magnets that ANY company can use. 

Number 1: Cheat Sheets and Checklists

Talk about easy to consume and HIGHLY VALUABLE. The cheat sheet or checklist is hands down one of the best types of lead magnets. Nobody wants a PDF or eBook; they just don’t have the time, BUT they do have time for this type of content. 

Cheat sheets are great for any niche that requires reference points. This is perfect for business and marketing. You could do a glossary, buzzword, or keyword cheat sheet for newbies or even a list of easy calculations everyone forgets. 

The best way to come up with a cheat sheet for your audience is to figure out the questions they need answered, gather up all the answers, and put them on a nice and easy to use reference guide. 

Checklists are a little different but can be even MORE effective. At DigitalMarketer, we believe in giving tactical, step-by-step advice and that anything other than that is fluff. 

Checklists are the best way to make sure a task gets done right the first time (and every other time after that). Regardless of your industry, there is a useful checklist you can create. 

When putting together a useful checklist, make sure that it outlines a task that people actually do and then do the “Peanut Butter & Jelly” test. 

This test is a good way to teach you how to explain something step-by-step. So, if I asked you “Can you tell me how to make a PB&J?” and you start with, “First you spread the peanut butter,” I’ll quickly follow up with, “Where’d you get the peanut butter? Where do I spread it? Where did you get that?”

You’ll see how many assumed steps exist and be able to address them in a succinct and sequential order. 

Number 2: Templates, Templates, Templates

PEOPLE LOVE TEMPLATES. They see these as lead magnets and go absolutely bananas. 

Templates are the ultimate shortcut for your audience. 

You don’t have to be in the email business, landing page business, or website creation space to create templates for your audience—we do it all the time at DigitalMarketer. 

You’ll want to ask yourself, “What’s something that my audience could just fill in and then implement in their business?” It’s like a business MadLib! 

We’ve created things like plug and play email templates, ad templates, marketing scorecards, and customer avatar/persona templates.

Number 3: Video Training

Notice I didn’t say “webinar.” Don’t get me wrong, webinars are a phenomenal way to generate leads and sales, BUT…

A webinar is meant to be an event and when someone says “no” to your webinar, they might be saying “no” to the date, the time, or the content. 

On-demand, limited-time, video trainings have been a game changer at DigitalMarketer. We don’t use evergreen webinar funnels much these days, instead we take a piece of video content out of our vault (we have a ton of it) and ask people to register within a time frame to lock in access. 

WE NEVER TAKE AWAY ACCESS. That’s key. 

So, now when they hit the landing page, they aren’t weighing their options and checking their calendar. They are, however, evaluating your content and its value… so make it good. 

Oh, one more thing. The limited time nature is really just the cherry on top to spark action. If you plan on having this content readily available, just gate it.

Number 4: Free Shipping or Discounts

I know we’ve said coupons aren’t really lead magnets, but you can position discounts and free shipping so that they become lead magnets (or at least check most of the boxes).

If you’re running a brick and mortar or ecommerce shop, you might be a little strapped for lead magnet content. Also if they’re on your site, you probably don’t want to navigate them away from a purchasing decision. 

Enter discounts or free shipping in exchange for their contact information. 

Yup, it’s that simple. Target new visitors on your site and try to LOWER the barrier to entry. Make the buying decision even easier (either in that moment or in the inevitable follow up emails you’ll send). 

The unfortunate thing is that MOST e-commerce and retailers are running this playbook, so it’s pretty much table stakes. You’re going to want to find a way to stand out in a crowd of “10-15% off for new visitors”. 

Number 5: Swipe Files

Ah the good ol’ swipe file. If you’re anything like me, you have an email folder filled with swipe-able emails, a bookmark folder of swipe-able pages (for design, copy, and content), and a slack channel dedicated to cool swipe-able examples. 

If you’re not like me, then (in this case) you probably should be. Become obsessed with your industry (even your tangential ones) and you’ll be surprised at what you can learn! 

Even better, as you start building these out, you can create one of the most powerful lead magnets IN EXISTENCE: the swipe file. 

There are two truths that make swipe files so useful and desirable:

1. There’s an overabundance of valuable information readily available
2. People are lazy 

If you’re doing the whole swipe file curation correctly, you can do a significant amount of competitive research AND compile what you’ve found into a single document that you can trade for contact information. 

In fact, I’ve seen swipe files used for more than just lead magnets (I’ve bought swipe files for as much as a couple hundred dollars)! 

At DM, our most successful lead magnets have ALL BEEN SWIPE FILES:

• FB Ad Templates
• Social Media Swipe File 
• 101 Blog Subject Lines 

All are examples of lead magnets that have generated hundreds of thousands of leads for us. 

So, to recap:

1. Cheat Sheets/Checklists
2. Templates, Templates, Templates
3. Video Trainings
4. Free Shipping or Discount
5. Swipe Files

If you want to dive deeper, you can check out some more examples, 4 other lead magnet ideas, PLUS a super helpful Lead Magnet Checklist (hey remember how much I like checklists?!) on the DM blog. 

And head over to our YouTube channel for more Marketing Mastery tips.

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