Redefining the Marketing Dashboard

If you’re a CMO and want a shelf life longer than 23 months, here’s a tip: measure everything your team does. Measure the total number of leads they generate. Understand how many qualified opportunities they produce. Quantify their contribution to revenue. Track leads created by sales territories. At the end of the day, measurement breeds excellence.


Why bother with marketing metrics? For the same reason you spend time every week tracking your workouts. Ok, I know this analogy may seem like a stretch for some of you out their so bear with me for a minute. Why do folks keep records of their exercise regimes? So they can measure their progress over time, so they can set personal goals, and eventually, so they can exceed these goals.


As an example, I try to run several times a week. And as much as I hate running, I keep track of how long I run during each and every workout. Every time I go for a run, I try to go for at least 5 minutes longer than my previous workout. Having goals & striving to exceed these goals breeds excellence. After all, how am I going to be a better runner if I don’t keep track of how long or how fast my last run was?


Now to the point of this post. How can you possibly be a better marketer without measuring the effectiveness of your last campaign? How can you possibly have longevity as a CMO if you don’t actively track and push your team for ever better results? So do yourself a favor. Take the time to measure your progress. You & your team will be better off for it!

The age old dilemma– how should you measure b2b marketing ROI? There’s a camp of marketers who believe that marketing and sales should be closely aligned, and therefore calculating b2b ROI requires measuring marketing’s direct impact on sales. I’m going to call this camp the reformists. The opposing camp strongly opposes directly tying marketing to sales. They argue that closely linking the two departments can result in marketing getting penalized for things outside their control (e.g., a lousy sales team). These b2b marketers prefer to measure marketing ROI by contribution to overall sales pipeline. I’ll call this camp the traditionalists. I feel for the traditionalists. There’s nothing worse than generating tons of leads that never get closed, and worse yet, then getting blamed for not generating enough quality leads. However, I do believe that marketing ROI is best measured by calculating the overall impact to top line revenue. Here’s why:

1. Aligns Incentives. At the end of the day, unless you’re at a non-profit, the primary goal of every company is to make money, and the goal of any individual in any department is to help the company make money. You’re not helping your company if you measure your success by building a big sales pipeline, if, for example, nothing in that pipeline closes. Sure, your team is successful, but the company isn’t.
2. Reduces sales & marketing tension. I know, this one may seem counterintuitive. But think about it, if you sit down with your sales VP and tell him/her that you’re measuring your team by contribution to pipeline, what sort of message do you think it sends? It implies doubt, doubt in the sales team’s ability to close deals. Measuring b2b marketing ROI on deals that close means that marketing & sales successes are linked. It means that both departments have to cooperate in order to win.
3. Ensure personal success. I know, this one also seems paradoxical. The traditionalists out there are probably thinking how can you possibly be successful if you measure your success by the sales team’s ability/inability to close deals? You’ll constantly be missing your objectives. If your sales team isn’t closing deals, there’s generally a really good reason why. When you’re in a white hot market, even the worst sales person can close a deal. I’ll never forget the story of a SUN Microsystems sale’s rep who consistently exceeded quotas in the late 90’s. Mind you this sales rep was so bad that he used get the name of his customer consistently wrong (he called him Merlin, when the customer’s name was Roland?!). This sales rep exceeded quota because he was selling a product that everyone needed. If your sales team isn’t closing deals, it could be that your product/ service is a nice to have, not a must have. It could be you’re selling to the wrong buyer, pricing your product/ service incorrectly, etc.. You’ve got two choices– do everything you can to try to fix the problem, or jump ship to your next opportunity. If you ignore the problem (likely the case when you’re only measuring marketing’s contribution to the sales pipeline), you can all but guarantee that you’ll waste years of your life at a company that never ends up making it.

You’re a B2B marketer in a company that either doesn’t understand or value marketing. See prior blog post for the 5 signs that marketing’s undervalued in your organization. One of the best ways to turn things around is to start internally advertising your marketing wins.

Now you may wonder why you should proactively educate your executives or sales people on marketing’s value. Executives who understand your department’s contribution are more likely to support your efforts, are more likely to continue funding marketing initiatives. We all know that marketing budgets get scrutinized in downturns. Laura Ramos from Forrester Research recently conducted a study on the economic impact on B2B budgets. 42% of survey participants expect marketing budgets to decrease in 2009. Only 25% of participants will actually see their marketing budgets increase. If you want to be part of that 25%, then you need to start internally selling your team’s successes!

Here are three practical tactics to increase marketing visibility internally.

1) Include key executives on emails generated by lead registration forms.

I used to include executives on the emails generated when someone successfully completed a website form. The emails included the registrant’s contact info, title, company, and size of the opportunity. I used to drive as many marketing campaigns as possible to these forms because I wanted the executives to feel inundated by the registration emails, I wanted them to see firsthand the quality of leads generated. These very executives would often come to my defense when the sales teams complained about lack of leads, or abundance of poor quality leads. Now you might get asked by an executive to remove them from the email distribution list. If they’re asking you to take them off the list, it only means that you’re flooding their Inbox with leads. Don’t worry, you’ve made your point.

2) Always communicate marketing campaign metrics internally

You ran a successful marketing campaign. It’s time to start selling your success. Get in the habit of collecting marketing metrics and communicating them to critical internal constituents. When a campaign first completes, send out a summary email with total leads generated & total size of business available from those leads. I’d also include the company names of some of the larger leads generated just to reinforce the quality of the campaign. As more time passes, send follow on emails with total qualified leads generated and total sales opportunities created.

3) Celebrate sales wins with marketing campaign context

It’s always great when the sales team closes new business. Make it a point to find out whether the sale originated from a marketing program, and if it did, be sure to market this fact internally to key executives. Closely linking these sales wins to campaigns only reinforces your overall marketing ROI.

I meet many marketing executives who lament that their departments are misunderstood, that their contributions to the business are undervalued. It’s an age old dilemma that has haunted many marketing executives, but it is a dilemma that is fixable. I believe that many marketers may do a great job marketing their company/ products, but they do a miserable job marketing their team’s achievements. How do you know whether you’re one of those individuals? If you’ve heard one or more of these statements from your sales teams or your executives, then it’s time to get serious about your internal marketing efforts.

1.    Marketing doesn’t generate enough leads
2.    Marketing doesn’t generate any good leads
3.    None of our sales came from marketing campaigns
4.    I don’t know what marketing does
5.    We have a marketing department?

Ok, so you answered yes to one of the statements above. Now what? The good news is that there are several tactics that you can use to improve marketing’s visibility within your organization. Stay tuned for my self-help guide in my next blog post.