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Marketers traditionally focus on the top of the sales funnel. However, more marketers are becoming responsible for down-funnel metrics. Marketing leaders now place less value on lead volume and cost-per-lead, and more value on metrics like revenue, ROI and cost-per-acquisition, and win rate.
Only 11% of marketers are judged primarily on lead volume, while about 50% are judged based on pipeline, revenue, or customer generation, according to the new State of Pipeline Marketing 2016 report.
Pipeline marketing focuses on the entire sales funnel rather than just the top of the funnel, a typical marketing priority, and helps marketers better focus on ROI, the report explains. However, marketers face many hurdles when attempting to align their activities with business results. They face a deluge of data that’s difficult to collect, aggregate and store. Many marketing teams lack analytical skills, and most tend to rely on easier to track metrics.
Measurement Challenges
While marketers are being held accountable to down-funnel metrics, it’s not clear that marketing organizations can effectively measure that data. Only 28% of respondents said that believe their company can effectively measure marketing performance. Over a third lack confidence in the accuracy of their marketing data. Only 28% said their organizations can effectively measure marketing performance. Over a third said they are neither confident nor not confident. Notably, 42.4% said that they were unsure of their current ROI.
An earlier Forrester Research white paper, Metrics that Matter for B2B Marketers, also asserts that the most important metrics quantify the outcome of marketing’s work across the entire customer life cycle. Life-cycle-based performance measures give marketers the data they need to quantify the contribution that marketing makes to building the pipeline, generating revenue, and growing accounts.
However, only 10% of organizations polled believe their teams are effective at using data analytics to reach decisions, according to the Forrester research.
Other Key Marketing Findings
Other key findings from the State of Pipeline Marketing include:
- 3% of marketers expect their marketing budget to increase in 2017
- 6% of marketers plan on increasing their amount of content marketing in 2017
- 2% of respondents said that word-of-mouth referrals have the greatest impact on revenue.
- 67% use both marketing automation software and CRM software.
- Email marketing is the most commonly used marketing channel, used by 87%.
- Social media, used by 84%, jumped five spots since last year to become the second most popular marketing channel.
- Just 15.8% of respondents reported that they use traditional media, which continues to decline as a marketing option.
The Social Media Measurement Option
As social media becomes a major marketing channel, other researchers note that more marketers are taking advantage of social media measurement services to track key performance indicators and measure social media marketing campaigns.
Bottom Line: The most effective marketers track metrics through the entire sales funnel, not merely leads. Pipeline marketing, or focusing on the entire funnel, helps improve ROI. However, many marketers lack satisfactory measurement. Social media measurement has become a useful option, especially since social media has emerged as one of the most prevalent marketing channels.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
