Measuring B2B Marketing activities

What are the key metrics you need to be aware of when reviewing the success or failure of a B2B marketing programme?

I have listed a few below which I always tend use as a basis. Obviously certain campaigns and events will have specific goals you will want to measure success against but as a minimum i try and use the following criteria to allow a true comparison at the end of each quarter and year end.

• Name of marketing activity
• Type of marketing activity; advertising, direct mail, data list, event, exhibition, telemarketing campaign etc
• Allocated budget
• Actual spent
• Reach; eyeballs for an advert, impressions for online, footfall at an exhibition, recipients of a mailshot etc
• Number of leads generated; responses to a mailer, visitors to an exhibition stand, attendees at you event etc
• Number of meetings booked (this is a key metric for some B2B sales cycles but less so for others)
• Offers / Proposals sent out as a result of the activity
• Sales; Total number
• Sales; Total value
• Cost per lead
• Cost per Meeting
• Cost per Sale
• ROI for activity

Although this may seem like going back to basics it is amazing how many organisations fail to measure the success (or failure) of their marketing programmes. Businesses continue to spend money on activities just because they ran last year, because the competition are doing so or because the boss likes the idea rather than selecting where to spend marketing budget based on sound judgement and demonstrable results. This sort of measurement is also more than a tool for marketing to pat ourmselves on the back with when positive results are shown, this can also highlight any gaps in the sales cycle or flag any areas that require attention.

And in the words of Peter Drucker - You can't manage what you can't measure! (Drucker, 1993)

Need some marketing inspiration?

A selection of business, marketing and life experience quotes that may help you look at things from a slightly different perspective.

"Some days you're the dog. Some days you're the lamppost"

"Whether you think you can or think you can't, either way you're right."

"Tough times don't last but tough people do"

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently" (Henry Ford)

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing" (Warren Buffet)

"If not you, who? If not now, when?"

"Morale is when your hands and feet keep on working when your head says it can't be done" (Benjamin Morrell)

"The secret to managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided" (Casey Stengel)

"The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority" (Kenneth Blanchard)

"When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed to two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity" (John F. Kennedy)

"The principle is: competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before" (Steve Young)

"To dream of the person you’d like to be is to waste the person you are" (Body Shop Advert)

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle

"If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted & the nuts will still be nuts" (Dilbert)

"Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones" (La Rochefoucauld)

"Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more one has to do, the more he is able to accomplish" (Sir Thomas Buxton)

"Four things do not come back – the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity" (Arabian Proverb)

Pitfall of B2B SME marketing #1

Common mistakes to avoid if you’re doing B2B SME marketing

· Stop using hotmail for corporate emails
Create a corporate email account - there is no excuse really. Its easy, its cheap and if you don't do it - its noticed.

You’ve generated the interest, hooked the lead and they ask you to send over more information – or even better a quote. When this arrives from a hotmail or gmail email address the perception people have is that you are much smaller and less professional than you really are. An email from joebloggs@madeupcompanyname.com will have a very different impact to the same email from joebloggs@hotmail.com

Sometimes marketing effort is as much about avoiding the negative as well as trying to add value.

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B2B Marketing UK - new small business marketing service

B2BMarketingUK is now able to offer marketing services to UK small businesses. We are collection of marketing profesionals who specialise in all aspects of B2B markeitng with a focus on lead generation and marketing ROI.

A few of our services can be found below.

Design

All marketing design including;
Adverts, Flyers, Postcards, Online Brochures, Posters, Leaflets, Newsletters (Internal & External)

Sample project:

A5 Flyer / A6 postcard (copy provided by client)
Briefing call / meeting
Multiple initial design proposals
Feedback call
Final Design
Supplied electronically as PDF – excludes printing costs

8 page online brochure (copy provided by client)
Briefing call / meeting
Multiple initial design proposals
Feedback call
Final Design
Supplied electronically as PDF – excludes printing costs

Strategy & Planning

Marketing Planning – What are your objectives? Where is your market? What makes them tick? How to market effectively to them?

Business Planning – Where are you now? Where do you want to be? How will you get there?

Brand Planning – Improve your profile, Understand your positioning, Where do you want to be? How do you get there?

Campaign Planning – Setting campaign objectives, Choosing the right medium, Running an effective campaign, Measuring true results, Improving future campaigns.

Sample project:

Marketing plan
Briefing call / meeting – 1-2 hours
Marketing research
Includes;
Current market situation
Objectives of plan
Marketing strategy
Tactics & Campaign suggestions
Resource requirements
How to measure success
Supplied electronically as PDF

Lead Generation

Sourcing tenders & RFI

Online lead generation consultancy

Lead generation campaign management

Sample project:

Sourcing tenders & RFI
Briefing call at start of project to define tender types of interest
Supplied by email ad hoc as they come up

Events & Exhibitions

Organising corporate events

Planning for Trade shows

Event campaign management

Online

Web design

Online Marketing (Site optimisation, driving traffic, improving conversion)

Web Analytics Consultancy

Press & PR

Press release distribution (Print & Online)

Copywriting for brochures, web, press releases, campaigns, case studies etc

Price List

All projects are undertaken on a fixed price, this is determined on a project by project basis.

We offer an hourly rate for all services but you will always receive a fixed price quote before undertaking any work. The standard hourly rates apply for additional works outside of the original project scope.

Please contact Wendy Melville on 07919 403 044 for more information or to obtain a quote.

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2009 - the year of the telemarketer

How can you communicate a personalised message to the key decision maker of your exact target segment and truly know if the marketing message got through all of the gatekeepers, was heard above the other marketing noise and had any impact whatsoever? A marketing channel that can achieve this is a dream come true for marketers - which is why I don’t understand why telemarketing is so underrated.

Too many businesses push their telemarketing departments to operate a spray and pray philosophy and in the current climate more and more organisations are putting pressure on telemarketing teams for higher call volumes and increased activity. This is a very reactive approach and, although higher call volumes often do contribute to increased leads, this will work only through luck rather than planning if not combined with profiling and an understanding of the business needs of your prospects.

A few tips to make B2B telemarketing more effective

Review your customer base
How well do you know your own strengths and weaknesses? Highlight which sectors you are well established in. Draw case studies, customer testimonials and even reference visits for prospects from these sectors. It is here you have a position of authority and can be seen as an expert in your field.

Learn the benefits
If prompted could each telemarketer list 5-10 business benefits of your products or services with current real life examples demonstrating each benefit? Many people list functionality – it can do this, we offer that etc. Those with the best response rates list benefits – its saves our customers an average of 5 hours admin time per day, we improved response rates by 30% in the first 2 months, Would you like to receive our case study on xyz (preferably in their sector – even better if it is one of their competitors) highlighting what they did to achieve this?

Share the bigger picture
No one should work in isolation to the wider business. Do your telemarketers understand their impact on the success or failure of the company business plan? They are often at the forefront of a company’s lead generation campaign and are the first and lasting impression to the marketplace of your organisation. Instilling a sense of responsibility will help the telemarketing department feel their true worth and that their contribution is being valued by the business.

Reward the right kind of success
Make sure your team is being rewarded for the right kind of success. Which leads are most likely to close, are of more value to the company and are likely to generate the most revenue? Surely the focus should be on chasing more of these and less of any other. Adjust your reward / commission structure to reflect the type or leads you wish to generate (i.e what is the company profile of your ideal prospect? Can you offer more incentives the closer the telemarketer can get to this?)


Telemarketing is an art form and should not be underrated. The skill of engaging with a business decision maker in a few brief moments or over the space of a few calls is a difficult one to develop. Value you telemarketers as they are the voice of your brand, your business and you. It is them that your potential customer base is listening to.

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Reasons companies should not slash marketing budgets in 2009

Reasons companies should not slash marketing budgets in 2009


1. Perception is everything. Once the market alters its perception of you, your company, your brand it can be very difficult to get back to the original state. Suddenly cut back on attending exhibitions, running regular print ads, halting all campaigns or regular marketing activities and customers and prospects will ask why, and competitors will exploit the doubt this creates.

2. It is not marketing spend it is marketing investment. You wouldn’t halt all product development and decide to stop innovating and just agree to offer the same old product or service with no further improvements until the economy is in boom again would you? This mentality would allow every other competitor to gain more and more competitive advantage over you and when the economy recovered you would be left miles behind. It should be the same with marketing. This is your chance to increase your share of voice while others are losing theirs, your chance to gain exposure while others are losing it, and when the outlook improves you will be in the strongest position of all. (Think PG tips in the last recession – they kept investing and increased market share, Tetley and Typhoo didn’t and lost out in)

3. Pipeline. Consistently feeding the B2B sales pipeline is more important than ever. As companies get nervous about any spend or investment sales will need more leads entering the sales funnel, any drop in leads generated will impact at a time when organizations require more leads not less to hit target. Don’t reduce marketing spend now or reduction in subsequent leads could rapidly impact the bottom line.

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Reasons companies should slash marketing budgets in 2009

Reasons companies should slash marketing budgets in 2009


1. Spend smarter. If you believe the 80/20 rule then a lot (not all) of companies are wasting marketing budget by not targeting the 20% of the prospect base that hold true potential. Hand on heart how many marketers can say we know who our real high value segments are and who they are likely to be over the coming 12 months? Many could spend less money but through smarter targeting generate more response.

2. Bring out the creativity. It is when people are in situations outside of their comfort zone that they often flourish (or perish). Smaller budgets demand greater creativity. Marketing a new service on a million pound budget allows lavish communication plans and multiple activities on a grand scale, but would this really generate more interest and exposure than an ingenious viral campaign that really gets people talking about you? Start thinking outside the box rather than relying on ‘it worked in 2007 and kind of worked in 2008 so we might as well do it in 2009 as well’ planning.

3. More than one way to skin a cat. There are ways to reduce spend and maintain effectiveness - move from TV to radio, from print to online. Find a way to reach the same audience in a new, cheaper way. Buy the same but spend less by bulk ordering or offering longer commitments – as many companies are in the same boat there are many discounts and long term deals to be done.

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Business Darwinism - Survival of the fittest

I read an article recently about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and why some species survive and others perish.

According to Darwin 'fittest' does not always mean strongest or biggest. In the business world it doesn't mean richest, oldest or most established either. In recent years business has boomed and although sales and profits have been at record highs so many companies failed to acknowledge it was could never continue indefinitely and the slowdown was always going to come - it was just a matter of how soon and the speed that has taken many of us by surprise.

As changing environmental factors threaten many industries today, how can looking back to the natural world help us to ensure we survive the economic natural selection and maintain our market share, our service levels and our even our jobs?

Natures natural selection occurs when;

- Living things produce more offspring than the finite resources available to them can support.
Thus living things face a constant struggle for existence.

Before the crunch when everyone was spending and borrowing there were enough resources (customers and their budgets) to go around and keep us all fed. The current downturn has bought to the attention of many that, with diminishing resources (consumer credit), the food chain has been hit and the casualties have started. The struggle facing those who remain is to battle for the remaining resources (budgets, contracts, goodwill etc) in order to survive and eventually flourish.

- The individuals in a population vary in their phenotypes. Those variants best adapted to the conditions of their life are most likely to survive and reproduce themselves

Differentiation and adaptability become key. The ability to understand what has changed in your environment and what the real implications are for your business will help you move your organisation towards making the changes necessary for survival. If, more importantly, you can understand the real implications for your customers business you will be able to adapt your working practices to meet their changing needs and stand out from the competition.

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