B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 3)

Part 3 of B2B marketing analytics. In this post we continue the discussion about analyzing your B2B marketing ROI. As we mentioned in Metrics to Focus On (Part 2), the effectiveness of your blog and SEO practices can be measured in several ways. Such is the case for your social media and content marketing practices. In fact, your overall B2B marketing strategy should be analyzed for each marketing practice employed. Establishing your social media and content marketing ROI takes more than counting click-throughs and “likes”. Here are some key metrics to analyze for your social media and content marketing practices.

Social

Connections

Measuring the sales effectiveness of your B2B social campaign should not only be focused on esoteric behavior such as “likes” or followers. While metrics about linking can be an important indicator of brand awareness or favorability, those numbers represent a shallow level of engagement. Which social channels are actually driving sales? Connecting social engagement with revenues is more effective in evaluating social media ROI. Examine the number of conversions resulting from social connections to see how effectively your social messaging is being received.

Engagement (Comment Streams)

As with blogging, articles, and other channels that provide feedback via comments, social conversations should be analyzed. The unstructured conversations that revolve around your brand provide deeper insight into your markets compared to less expository activities like website visits. Social media monitoring should include a thorough analysis of comments received from Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and other inbound channels. Which threads are longest? What topics generate the most threads? Social engagement should be directly linked to revenue generation in order to evaluate social media ROI.

Channel Effectiveness

Not all social channels provide the same impact on your bottom line; the amount and complexity of messaging shared through SM streams varies. Although responses through different channels may be similar (likes, favorites, shares, retweets, etc.), the return from social channels is often variable because of the costs associated with SM activities. For example, a 140-character Twitter post typically will cost less than an artfully crafted image posted on Pinterest. Which channels provide a bigger bang for your buck?

Content

Channel Effectiveness

We’ve all heard that children learn in different ways. The same concept holds true for sales. The effect your messaging has on buying triggers will often vary according to the content channels used. For instance, some B2B buyers may be more sales-ready following a product video while others may be prepared to purchase following a podcast or webinar. Which assets drive website traffic, which ones generate comments, and, most importantly, which assets lead to conversions? Are product videos more effective or do webinars drive more sales? Examine which content channels lead to sales engagements.

Message Effectiveness

Within each content channel, the return from messaging should be analyzed. Which messages lead to extended engagements? Which ones drive leads to other content streams? It’s important to analyze your messages to determine what contributed to the success or failure of a campaign.

Shared Content

Once your content is viewed how often is it shared? Which content is being shared most frequently? Of course, the ultimate goal is to drive sales but content sharing levels are also an important objective of content marketing. Analyzing the frequency of shared content, as well as the duration of each exposure, can reveal how effectively your content appeals to your markets.

Our next post in this series will discuss the metrics you should analyze from your PPC and email practices.