What are the key metrics you should track as a B2B marketer targeting a niche to be able to justify increasing your budget?
It is important to plan your campaigns and measure their effectiveness carefully. But with so many metrics to choose from, it can be challenging to determine which ones are most relevant to your specific campaign goals. Whether you are focused on building brand awareness, generating demand, or enabling sales, the metrics you need may vary.
However, the approach to selecting and using these metrics remains consistent. Our model provides an end-to-end view of the marketing process, helping you identify and track the most important metrics for your campaigns. Click here to download our infographic.
When planning your B2B marketing campaigns, it is important to start by understanding the size of your target audience and your total addressable market (TAM). Research has shown that typically only 5% of a B2B audience is actively in the market at any given time. This means that defining and sizing your niche is a crucial first step in planning an effective campaign.
If your target audience is relatively small, for example, only 500 companies globally, your marketing approach must be tailored accordingly. The size of your audience will influence how you communicate with them and the types of metrics you use to measure the success of your campaigns.
Some example metrics to consider when targeting a niche B2B audience include:
1. Searches – for specific problems that your product or service solves and brand and product-led searches.
2. Site traffic – including traffic to your website and those of your defined competitors.
3. Audience profiling – using data sources such as LinkedIn is better for understanding the characteristics and needs of your target audience.
By carefully selecting and tracking these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into the size and behaviour of your target audience, helping you plan more effective campaigns.
Once you have defined your target audience and TAM, it is important to understand that not all of them can be reached. There may be budget constraints or other factors that limit your ability to get in front of your entire audience. This is where building a targeting model can be helpful. By using metrics such as impressions and searches, you can determine how many people you are actually reaching and adjust your efforts accordingly.
For example, if you have a large TAM but a poor reach, you may need to focus on increasing your visibility and getting in front of more potential customers. On the other hand, if you have a small TAM and a large reach, simply increasing the volume of your campaigns may not be enough to drive growth.
In addition to reach, it is also important to understand levels of brand awareness among your target audience. Surveys and indicators such as brand search terms can provide valuable insights, but regular pulse research is the most effective way to gauge what prospects know about your brand. We recommend using the Brand Asset Validator model for this type of research.
Some example metrics to consider when measuring reach and brand awareness include:
1. Impressions – The number of times your content is displayed to your target audience.
2. Searches – The number of searches for your brand or product-related terms.
3. Perception surveys – Regular surveys asking prospects what they know about your brand.
4. Brand search term indicators – Comparing the volume of searches for your brand with those of your competitors.
By carefully tracking these metrics, you can gain a better understanding of how many people you are reaching and how aware they are of your brand, helping you plan more effective campaigns.
After defining your target audience and understanding your reach and brand awareness, the next phase of a successful B2B marketing campaign is engagement. This is all about understanding who is engaging with the content you are producing and how they are interacting with it.
Engagement can be divided into three stages: Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, and Bottom of Funnel. At each stage, there are different metrics you can use to measure engagement and understand how your audience is progressing through the funnel.
At the top of the funnel, you can track early-stage engagement that can inform you how many people are engaging with your content and becoming marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).
Examples of these are input metrics, which include:
1. Amount of social content produced per month.
2. Engagement on social media.
3. Frequency of newsletters.
4. Number of case studies or blogs being produced.
In the middle of the funnel, you can track actions such as trial requests as an Indicator Metric. This can help you understand how many people are becoming sales-qualified leads (SQLs) and showing a deeper level of interest in your product or service.
Other indicator metrics could be:
1. Number of event registrations.
2. Downloads of gated content.
At the bottom of the funnel, you can track actions such as subscription requests as an output metric. This can help you understand how many people are becoming sales-qualified opportunities (SQOs) and are ready to make a purchase.
You can also look at other metrics to measure your marketing efforts; these could look like:
1. Win Rates, being the percentage of sales opportunities that become closed-won deals.
2. Number of qualified opportunities entering the pipeline.
3. Average leads generated per quarter.
4. Deal conversation rate.
For further information on setting the right input, indicator and output KPIs, read our blog here [Link to Article 1] to measure your niche marketing operation.
The final part of our guide is to have visibility on the overall marketing efforts and to understand how well these efforts and your company as a whole is being perceived by your TAM. These metrics look at the belief in your product and company.
Obviously, here we are looking at revenue and revenue-driving metrics, such as:
1. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
2. Revenue Churn.
3. Conversion Rate by Funnel Stage.
4. Lifetime Value (LTV).
But, an additional element to be aware of, which we would overlay across parts 3 & 4, would be customer satisfaction. For a B2B brand, good satisfaction leads to advocacy and recommendations, which are the most powerful way to find more business. To understand the impact of your marketing efficiency, you will need to track the following:
1. Net Promotor Scores (NPS).
2. Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
3. Repeat Business Run Rates.
The importance of tracking the first section of metrics provides you with insights into the overall health and growth of the business. This will help you understand how much revenue you are generating and, more importantly, where you are losing revenue.
Adding the final 3 metrics, you will better understand how satisfied your customers are with your product and company.
What MarTech should you use to do this?
Managing marketing efforts for a niche audience can be challenging because most MarTech platforms are designed for larger audiences and thus are geared towards volume. As a result, it is difficult to find a single platform that is fit for purpose when targeting a small audience. To overcome this challenge, we have built our own MarTech stack by combining multiple platforms and pushing the boundaries of their technical capabilities. We use bespoke reporting and APIs to unlock the full potential of these platforms and track our marketing efforts effectively. The main MarTech stack we encourage to track this is:
1. Search Behaviour – SEMRush.
2. Analytics – Google TAG Manager or Piwik PRO plus HotJar for insight.
3. Visibility Analytics – ClearBit and DealFront (F.K.A. LeadFeeder)
4. Visualisation – Looker Studio.
5. Marketing Automation – HubSpot
6. Surveys – Typeform.
7. CRM – HubSpot, although Marketo comes a close second.
8. Paid Media – LinkedIn Advertiser, StackAdapt, etc.
9. Organic Media Automation – HooteSuite
And, of course, we can assist you in setting up your MarTech stack if required.
In conclusion, careful planning and measuring campaign effectiveness are crucial for achieving your marketing goals. With a wide range of metrics available, it can be challenging to determine which ones are most relevant to your specific campaign objectives. Whether you focus on building brand awareness, generating demand, or enabling sales, the metrics you need may vary.
By using our model to gain an end-to-end view of the marketing process, you can identify and track the most important metrics for your campaigns.
If you would like to see how Velo can help you with not only setting these KPIs but also achieving them effectively and efficiently, contact us today here.
