How to know if your B2B marketing is working — and what to do if it isn’t.

When it comes to tracking results, many small businesses make a common error: concentrating on sales and revenue, and neglecting marketing.

Of course, it’s completely understandable. After all, sales and leads are what keep your accountant happy and business ticking over. They’re often easier to track too; it’s far simpler to track sales figures than to measure something less concrete like brand awareness.

However, sales don’t happen in a vacuum and if you want to keep a healthy number of leads coming into your business, you need to widen your focus to take in the entire funnel — and that includes knowing whether (and how) your marketing efforts are paying off.

How do you know your marketing efforts are working?

Define your goals: know what to measure.

If you want to know if your marketing is paying off the first thing to consider is your key goals — because if you’re not 100% sure about what you actually want to achieve with your marketing, how will you know what to measure and what success actually looks like?

Lead generation and sales will be a priority for most small businesses but your marketing strategy might also include things like brand awareness, engagement, lead nurturing, and even customer retention. If so, it’s vital to track not just the sales figures and the number of new inquiries coming in, but the metrics that relate to the other objectives you’ve set. 

Even if your focus is solely on lead generation, it’s important to think about the kind of leads you’re hoping to attract because, for you, acquiring five new clients for your newest offering might be a better success indicator than gaining 20 new clients for a service that you’re hoping to phase out.

Make friends with your metrics.

Oftentimes, a failure to assess your marketing success comes down to two things: the belief that some things just can’t be measured or the belief that measuring them is going to be really hard!

Luckily, neither is true.

So once you’ve determined your objectives, create a plan for how you’re going to track your success. Some metrics will be easier to measure, like web traffic, the number of new followers you’ve gained on Instagram, or the number of sign ups gathered from a sales page.

But don’t neglect soft metrics either. For example, if your primary goal for the quarter is brand awareness, an increasing number of podcast guest invitations, opportunities to speak at conferences, collaboration requests, or positive mentions on social media could all indicate that your efforts to increase your brand awareness are starting to bear fruit.

Ensure your sales and marketing teams are working together.

If your sales and marketing data are siloed, it can be hard to truly assess whether your marketing strategy is working, so it’s worth making sure that information is shared across the organization.

This should make it easier to judge which campaigns have been successful and highlight where there might be gaps in your sales funnel.

What to do if your B2B marketing isn’t working.

You’ve tracked the data, your sales and marketing teams are aligned — but the results aren’t where you want them to be. What can you do to up your marketing game?

Be patient.

Many of the most effective forms of marketing are a long game so don’t panic if you’ve recently implemented a new content strategy and you’re yet to see any tangible results.

Patience — and consistency — are key. Keep to the plan and you will almost certainly see the benefits increase over time.

Make sure you know your customer.

Often, marketing efforts fall short because they’re aimed at the wrong people.

But when you take the time to get 100% clear on the kind of people you’re targeting, their challenges, and the solutions they’re looking for, it becomes infinitely easier to come up with marketing campaigns that speak directly to them.

Create a compelling message.

If you’re operating in the B2B world, the chances are you’re facing a ton of competition, so it’s imperative you have a compelling marketing message that helps you stand out and gives your audience a reason to choose you.

Build the “know, like, and trust” factor.

We all know that people are more likely to buy from you if they know, like, and trust us. Yet far too many marketers focus their efforts on sales content.

If your organization has fallen into that trap, it would be a good idea to create content that increases brand awareness, authority, and credibility so that by the time you’re ready to advertise your next launch, your ideal customer is already aware of you and what you’re all about.

Have the right kind of people on board.

If you’re fairly confident your marketing strategy is solid, but you’re not seeing results, it could be that you don’t have the right people on board.

Marketing is often thought of as an easy gig and I’ve seen more than one organization suffer because they’ve left the bulk of their marketing in the hands of an intern.

However, devising strategies, creating and promoting content, and analyzing metrics are specialist skills — having a cohesive team of talented marketers, led by an experienced professional, is a complete gamechanger.

You already know that marketing is vital to the overall health of your organization and it’s more than likely that you’re spending a great deal of time, energy, and money on your marketing strategy. Devising a plan to measure the effectiveness of your current strategy — and thinking about how to tweak the bits that aren’t working — is the best way to make sure all of your hard work pays off.

If you’re ready to partner with someone who can create and implement marketing strategies that deliver concrete results (no matter what success looks like for you) connect with us now to find out how we can help.