$6.7 Trillion is the estimated revenue generated by the B2B industry in the US. Yeah, you read it right, Trillion with a T. But you can’t just expect to do some cold calls and earn millions.
Instead, you have a better chance by leveraging data to your benefit. B2B marketing KPIs allow you to refine tons of data into systematic and measurable formats and measure your business's marketing performance in terms of lead generation, revenue growth, and profitability.
So, in this article, we'll walk you through the purpose of B2B marketing KPIs, how they can lead your business, and the 12 most important KPIs every business owner should measure.
Marketing key performance indicators for B2B companies are quantifiable measurements used to gauge the company's marketing performance towards set goals and objectives.
Simply put, marketing KPIs tell you about how your campaigns are performing, the quality of your leads, and your content marketing strategy performance (if you have one, of course).
But not every marketer is smart enough to dig deep and track marketing KPIs that impact their business. All they do is study the basic KPIs and make a dashboard around them.
Every business is different and runs different marketing campaigns. Therefore, the B2B marketing KPIs every business tracks might vary.
We will get to the KPIs part later; first let’s talk about their importance.
You might be familiar with the term 'data-driven’ businesses. So, what's the fuss about it?
The business environment we live in is completely dependent on data - from marketing to sales - every neck of the woods requires data to taste success.
B2B marketing KPIs bring along the raw data, refine it, and present you with hidden insights that help you plan ahead of your competitors.
Besides, these metrics can help you forecast future trends, prevent mishaps, and make data-driven decisions.
With the perfect blend of B2B marketing metrics, you better understand which marketing campaigns are worth investing in and which need to be sacked.
You can use the insights derived from these KPIs to identify best-performing marketing campaigns and allocate budgets in those areas to scale your efforts.
Keeping an eye on certain B2B marketing KPIs, such as ROI and ROAS, can help you quantify and prove your business’s true marketing success.
After all, every business owner puts in hard-earned money to get rewarded in terms of an increase in revenue, profitability, and growth.
Now that you know the what and why of B2B marketing KPIs, here are the 12 KPIs that can help you measure your business’s marketing performance.
Website traffic is not a precise metric, i.e., it doesn't directly impact a company's financial health. However, from a marketing perspective, it's the foremost thing to track.
This KPI measures the number of visitors you get to your website via social channels, organic, or inorganic methods.
It's obvious that all your marketing and SEO efforts are aligned toward consistent website traffic. Monitoring and analyzing the traffic is a good way to get answers to questions like:
Besides, your website visitors can be potential leads who can later transform into customers. You don't want to ignore the leads, do you?
The best way we figured out to measure this metric is via tools such as Google Search Console. Using GSC, you can count and monitor traffic easily and effectively.
Click-through rate measures the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. As a metric, CTR tells you how well the audience is resonating with your ads or any other marketing campaign you run.
The ultimate goal of CTR is to get qualified users to take some kind of action you expect them to (ex: signup, make a purchase, or fill out a form).
When running a PPC campaign, the click-through rate directly impacts your Ad rank and the quality score (keywords, ad copy, landing page).
If you have a:
A lower CTR is often the result of the following:
Here's a simple formula to measure it:
Marketing Qualified Leads are leads that have shown interest in your product or service to be considered as qualified, But not enough interest to be a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
This KPI is of more relevance for B2B marketers than B2C because their sales cycles are longer, and purchasing decisions are rather complicated.
MQLs are considered half-baked leads because they are less likely to convert. They may need more marketing content exposure and guidance to push them down the funnel as sales-qualified leads.
Measuring the number of marketing leads that finally convert into SQLs helps you identify how effective your marketing efforts are. Plus, it lets you measure the cost of acquiring a lead.
For example, users who downloaded your ebook or brochure or signed up for your newsletter are considered marketing-qualified leads.
A sales-qualified lead, on the other hand, is one that has visited your pricing page multiple times or filled up a contact form.
To calculate the rate at which your marketing leads positively convert into sales leads, use this formula:
While generating quality leads is one thing, converting them to customers is a whole another concept. Lead to close conversion rate is the percentage of leads that convert into actual customers.
At the end of the day, what's the point of business if people don't buy from you?
Lead to close conversion rate KPI provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to convert potential leads into customers. As a result, allowing you to identify your top and worst-performing campaigns.
Here's how you can calculate it:
Bounce rate refers to the number of times people visit your website but leave without navigating through or staying on your website.
Bounce rate is a critical metric to measure due to three reasons:
The average bounce rate for B2B companies is 75%. Besides, the bounce rate also depends on the source of traffic.
For example, display ads and social media traffic tend to have a higher bounce rate than referrals and emails.
Here's how you can calculate it:
If one channel of your B2B marketing is email, it becomes extremely important to keep an eye on email signups.
Email Signups refer to the number of website visitors that sign up for your newsletter or any other email campaigns.
Although this seems like a simple metric, having a reliable email list can do wonders for your business.
The adoption rate of email marketing in B2B companies is around 88% because businesses still feel emails as the most reliable communication channel. And that's true!
Remember we said above that traffic generated from emails have the lowest bounce rates?
That's because emails are delivered directly to the audience who signed up for them. Therefore, making it highly likely to reach a qualified audience, unlike other marketing channels like social media that work on assumptions.
In the B2B context, email signups don't mean you need to pitch a new product or service every time (that's more accurate for B2C).
Here, you're offering highly specialized and intangible benefits to other businesses. Hence, leveraging your email list to communicate offers, updates, and information that can prove to be beneficial in earning trust and maintaining relationships.
Email signups can be simply counted if you're connected to any CRM; if not, you can count them manually.
Customer Acquisition Cost, also known as cost per conversion, refers to the amount of money incurred in acquiring new customers.
In the last five years, the CAC has soared by over 50%, giving a hard time to businesses in strategizing marketing budgets. Because if you don't leap, your competitors will.
This metric shows how effectively your B2B sales and marketing teams convert leads to customers while maintaining a lower CAC.
Here's a simple formula to calculate CAC:
Your business's financial health is alarming if your CAC exceeds the CLV (customer lifetime value). However, you can improve this by building adequate retention strategies and enhancing your marketing efforts.
Another significant B2B marketing KPI is the customer lifetime value. This KPI measures the amount of revenue generated by individual customers during their relationship with the business.
Tracking a customer's lifetime value answers three vital questions:
You can use these insights to create ideal customer personas and work towards a better marketing strategy for them.
Here’s how you can calculate CLV:
Note: The higher the CLV, the greater the profit and the more loyal customers you have with your business.
This KPI measures the predictable revenue that it expects to generate every month from its subscription model or direct sales.
MRR is a granular metric that focuses on the short-term aspects of a company's finances.
Being calculated every month, MMR helps you identify hidden insights such as:
Getting answers to these questions allows you to identify strategies to increase recurring revenue.
Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) is a crucial metric for calculating MRR. You can calculate it by taking the average revenue generated and dividing it by the total number of customers that month. And then, you can put that value in the MRR formula, that is:
When you invest a boatload of money in marketing, you want a positive return, right? May it be in terms of profits, leads, customers, or quality improvement.
Marketing ROI exactly measures that. This KPI specifically measures the return on investment from the marketing. Simply put, it compares the amount of money you spend on marketing to the amount you gain from it.
Firstly, determining marketing ROI is important because it keeps you motivated. And secondly, your ROI from each marketing campaign allows you to identify what's making you money and what's not.
This helps you invest money in profitable campaigns and double down on what's working.
Besides, ROI is a nail-biting metric for stakeholders. It's the only one they want to see increasing, keeping aside your efforts.
No wonder why marketing teams are so overwhelmed tracking this KPI.
For example, if one dollar spent on marketing brought five dollars in sales, the ratio is 5:1. This ratio is considered good, but; anything below 2:1 is not profitable.
Here's a simple formula to calculate marketing ROI:
The digital B2B ad spending in the United States accounts for $8.68 Bn.
This 10-figure value is enough to tell you why this is an important metric for a B2B company.
ROAS measures the amount of revenue your business earns against each dollar spent on advertising.
Although ROAS and ROI sound similar, they are Walter White and Heisenberg.
Marketing ROI is a comprehensive metric that measures the profitability of overall marketing efforts. It may include other operating expenses such as tools, remunerations, etc.
ROAS, however, is specific to the return from ad spending. It lets you figure out which ad campaigns are most and least successful; and if running ads is even worth the cost.
These insights can help you continuously refine your spending to generate the most revenue for the least cost.
Here's a quick formula to calculate ROAS:
Cost-per-click is yet another metric to measure the effectiveness of your online campaign.
This KPI measures the number of visitors directed to your website after clicking on a published advertisement. Basically, it's an internet advertising model where an advertiser pays the publisher for the number of times an ad is clicked.
So, the number of visitors you get to your website via ads incurs a certain cost, termed cost-per-click.
This metric helps you understand how well people resonate with your ads. If your ad has minimal clicks, there's something wrong with it.
Moreover, CPC is also relevant when measuring your ROI from ad spending.
Here's a pretty simple formula to calculate CPC:
Datapad is a modern-day dashboard creation tool that allows hustling entrepreneurs to track, monitor, and analyze business performance from their mobile phones.
Unlike traditional desktop dashboarding, our tool's feature-rich interface allows anyone to track KPIs from anywhere around the world on their mobile phones. All you need is a stable internet connection.
Besides, we haven't compromised with the functionality. You can perform every function on your mobile that a typical desktop dashboarding software does - from data extraction to monitoring and customizations, you have it all under your fingertips.
Now that you know why Datapad is a dear friend to business owners. Let's understand how you can create a B2B marketing KPI dashboard with it.
To get started, download the Datapad app on your device (available for Android and iOS) and sign up with your registered email address.
Once we've verified your email (just for caution), you are all set to roll.
Open the app, create your personal workspace and press the '+' sign in the top right corner.
Now, fill in the boxes and click on Create. That's it! Your dashboard has been created.
Since you're managing all your marketing campaigns on Datapad, you should get some help. Considering the team factor here, we've made team onboarding on Datapad a flawless feature.
You can simply invite your team members via email invites. But yes, you need to do it one by one. Here's how you can do it.
With Datapad, you can import data both ways: automatically and manually.
For automatic data import, you can opt for our one-click integration with popular data points such as Google Analytics, Google Sheets, SQL Databases, and more. Here’s how it's done:
Or, if you want to perform the process manually, you can do that too:
Moving forward, Datapad offers you complete customization options. You can change the look and feel of your dashboard - from text to colors and more. You can also adjust the color pallet as per your company's branding.
Moreover, Datapad has a variety of charts, tables, bars, and other data visualization elements to help you visualize your data quickly and efficiently.
But wait, there’s more; with Datapad, you can:
The features of Datapad are never-ending. So why not sign up for the platform and start tracking your B2B marketing kpis with Datapad for free.
