Account-based marketing has seen a surge in popularity of late, and B2B marketers are reporting increasing effectiveness of the tactics they’re using. But how are they measuring success? A new study [download page] from Demand Gen Report provides some answers.
The study is based on a survey of 173 B2B marketers from a mix of industries and company sizes, though almost half come from companies with at least $50 million in revenues. Respondents were asked to identify their top 3 metrics used to measure account-based marketing, from a list of 9.
The most commonly-used metrics are:
- Conversion of engaged account to opportunity (46% selecting as a top-3 metric);
- Individual campaign and channel metrics (46%); and
- Overall number of engaged accounts (42%).
The report notes that this demonstrates that marketers are sticking to activity-focused metrics. By contrast, metrics such as increased sales with existing customers (29%) and customer lifetime value (19%) are considered less important.
Looking at the need for deeper metrics overall, respondents reported that they’re driven primarily by a desire to show marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue (72%) as well as a push to show ROI from all marketing investments (68%). This makes sense given research showing that only about half of B2B salespeople believe marketing is an effective investment of a company’s resources. An earlier study likewise found just 51% of B2B marketers agreeing that marketing’s financial value is clear to the business.
As for the top metrics used by sales to measure marketing impact? This latest study shows that closed/won deals (51%), SQLs (51%) and pipeline influenced (47%) are at the top of the list.
Finally, the biggest challenges to measuring and demonstrating marketing performance and impact are the inability to measure impact across channels and campaigns (54%) and the inability to measure and track activity between specific buyer stages (51%).
