How to Measure the Performance of your B2B Inbound Marketing Campaign

Any form of marketing requires some sort of investment. Whether it be time, money, or in most cases, both. If you’re developing a B2B inbound marketing strategy, you need to know that your investment is paying off.

SMART Goals

First off, you can’t measure anything if you haven’t set any goals. One of the first things you do in an inbound marketing strategy is set SMART goals. Remember, these goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. The big takeaway is measurable.

For example, let’s say you run an athletic apparel business and you’d like to generate 35 new leads from your website over the next two months. These leads must be qualified, whether it be marketing qualified or sales qualified. The persona you’re probably trying to reach here would be an athletic director, coach, or someone who makes decisions within a youth sports organization.

Measuring Your Offer

Now that you have a specific goal in mind, you will create a downloadable content offer to go along with that goal. You’ve developed the guide “Best Materials to Make Your Sports Uniforms Last Longer.” You’ve written supporting blog posts with CTAs at the bottom of the page. Those CTA’s lead to a landing page with a form, allowing those visitors to convert right on your site. You can measure all of this!

Always Be Tracking

Since all goals are time-bound, you’ll track your progress often. This way you will know what’s working and what’s not. This sounds great, but what exactly should you be tracking, and where would you find it? Glad you asked!

Finding What You Need to Know

First you’re going to need some tools, such as Google Analytics or HubSpot’s built in dashboards. After you have those tools in place you can dive into the metrics.

If your campaign is successful, you should see growth in your organic traffic. If you’re seeing that growth, you can go in and see which pages are causing that spike in website traffic. If it’s a blog post supporting your new eBook, then you’ll know people are interested in your topic and your keywords are on point.

It’s Not Enough to Just Attract Visitors

However, in inbound we don’t just want to attract those visitors. We want to convert them into leads. How many people clicked on that CTA and filled out a form in exchange for an offer? If your conversions are high then again, you’re doing something right.

The Moment of Truth

Now you have to ask yourself some tough questions.

1. How many people who downloaded the eBook fall into your persona?
2. How many are MQLs? SQLs?
3. Have you closed any into sales? What’s your conversion rate?
4. Are these individuals purchasing in large qualities?
5. What’s the lifetime customer value?
6. Was all of the hard work and time put into developing this offer really worth it?

Use the Tools!

With tools like Google Analytics and HubSpot’s marketing dashboard, you can see this information on a daily basis.

HubSpot’s Landing Page Performance page allows you to see your total views for all of your landing pages, as well as their conversion rate. You can also see how many form submissions you have and then categorize those new contacts as either an MQL or SQL. You can also decide whether or not they’re the right fit.

The bottom line is: anything you do from an inbound marketing standpoint can be measured. As a marketer, salesperson, or business owner, you’ll know where your personas are on your site and what information is resonating with them.

Something’s Not Right

If you find you’re not having as much success as you thought, you can make some changes. However, remember to make one change at a time, so that when something does start working, you’ll know exactly which change made the difference.

Key Takeaways

• Make sure you set a clearly defined SMART Goal

• Track, measure, and analyze often

• High Quality Traffic + Conversion Rate + Closing Leads = Positive ROI

One Last Thing Before You Go...

You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Half the money we spend on marketing is wasted, but we don’t know which half.” Well, with inbound marketing you’ll know exactly how much you’re spending on your marketing efforts, and exactly what’s working.

Good luck!