METRICS MATTER - BusinessOnline · A B2B GUIDE TO FINDING REAL MARKETING ROI Metrics Matter: ......

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


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 )

https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/marketing-solutions/global/en_US/campaigns/pdfs/rethink-b2b-buyers-journey-v03.09-eng-us.pdf



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.


https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/b2b-beat/2016/b2b-beat--cmos-find-customer-centricity-difficult-to-implement




Kevin Carillo, 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


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).


42%Difficulty

extracting insights

13%Too much

data

12%Resources,

Time

23%Fragmented,poor quality

data


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.


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


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.


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.


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


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 - BusinessOnline · A B2B GUIDE TO FINDING REAL MARKETING ROI Metrics Matter: ......

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