B2B Marketers Deal with Range of Measurement Challenges

July 28, 2021

DemandGenReport Biggest B2B Measurement Challenges July2021Being able to prove marketing performance and impact is critical, yet only about 1 in 7 (15% of) B2B marketing executives rate their company’s current ability to do so as excellent. This is according to a report [download page] from Demand Gen Report, which found that 2 in 5 (39%) say their ability to measure and analyze marketing performance and impact is in need of improvement.

The B2B marketing executives surveyed report that they are currently tracking and analyzing an array of different areas, with the majority doing so with email (click-throughs and opens; 83%), web traffic (77%) and close/won business (63%), while MQLs (57%) and paid search (54%) are also tracked and analyzed by a majority. About half are also keeping an eye on form completion and contact (51%), lead to opportunity conversion (49%) and SQLs (49%).

A survey from Fortella found that about 2 in 3 senior-level B2B marketers felt the key responsibility of marketing was to drive revenue. As such, this report shows that many respondents are not only increasing their focus on or need for deeper metrics because of a push to show ROI from all marketing investments (67%) but also from a desire to show marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue (57%).

Challenges to Measuring Marketing Performance

With so many marketing executives thinking their organization could do better at measuring and analyzing the performance of marketing, it’s worth looking at the challenges they are currently facing.

An inability to connect and analyze data across applications and platforms is one of the biggest challenges faced by about half (51%) of respondents. This is followed by not being able to measure and track activity between specific buyer stages (46%).

The same proportion of respondents also say they are being held back by messy data (46%) and that they do not have enough resources (46%). Another 43% say they are faced with the inability to measure impact across channels or campaigns and 31% are challenged by lack of reporting.

Unfortunately, these challenges do not appear to be easing. Compared to a similar survey from last year by Demand Gen Report, a larger portion of respondents now report being challenged by each of the above factors.

ABM Not Immune from the Challenges

For the past few years, B2B marketers have been reaping the benefits of account-based marketing (ABM) – including higher ROI, efficient use of marketing resources, and better sales and marketing alignment. And, research indicates that three-quarters of businesses plan to up their investment in ABM this year.

Despite this, marketers from this most recent survey appear to be hindered by similar challenges seen by marketing overall in measuring their ABM efforts. Respondents say they are struggling with messy CRM data (51%), integrating data across platforms (51%), mapping leads to their corresponding accounts (46%) and tying anonymous account engagement to known stakeholders (46%).

The most popular metrics used to measure ABM are individual campaign and channel metrics (46%), conversion of engaged accounts to opportunity (44%) and overall number of engaged accounts (41%). However, more than 6 in 10 (63%) say they want to use deeper ABM metrics in the next 12-18 months.

The full report can be found here.

About the Data: Findings are based on a March and April 2021 survey of 134 B2B marketing executives, 72% of whom are from US companies.

45th Parallel Design Ad

Explore More Charts.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This