Measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing efforts with metrics like leads and lead conversion in the B2B space can be quite complex. Sales cycles are long and often many people from a company participate in the sales process. Marketing campaigns acquire new leads but also nurture people already in the sales process and often the people influencing the sale are unknown (never become a lead). - Understand the true value of your digital marketing efforts in a B2B world: - Measure success of search and all digital marketing channels based on the whole sales funnel - How to aggregate metrics from individuals at the company level (see all influencers in the evaluation process) - Measure success of marketing campaigns and assets based on their intent. - Show these concepts applied in a specific case study to optimize digital marketing, re-market, support sales and influence campaign development.

1. The B2B Challenge
Value and Attribution
Rob Cataford
Business Online
VP Analytics and Customer Intelligence
San Francisco| August 13–17

2. San Francisco | August 13–17, 2012 | #sessf
B2B Digital Marketers are asking, “How do I…”
1. Demonstrate the value of marketing and content
development?
2. Focus budget and effort to the most effective
channels and content?
3. Become a partner with sales and go beyond simply
providing leads?

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Solutions to These Questions
1. Demonstrate the value of marketing
• Apply the correct attribution
• Look at company-level „opportunities‟
2. Focus budget and effort
• Measure and optimize based on full sales funnel
• Measure and optimize based on marketing objectives
3. Become a partner with sales
• Inform sales on prospect behavior
• Alert sales on new potential and hot prospects

4. San Francisco | August 13–17, 2012 | #sessf
Solutions to These Questions
1. Demonstrate the value of marketing
• Apply the correct attribution
• Look at company-level „opportunities‟
2. Focus budget and effort
• Measure and optimize based on full sales funnel
• Measure and optimize based on marketing objectives
3. Become a partner with sales
• Inform sales on prospect behavior
• Alert sales on new potential and hot prospects

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Demonstrate the value of marketing
• Apply the correct attribution
• Look at company-level
„opportunities‟

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Let’s start with a story…
No,
A “True Story”
what’s really happening
behind the scenes

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I really need to find
that solution that will
solve everything!

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We Rule!
YOU happen to develop and
market an enterprise software
solution that solves everything

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(but you have competitors)

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So…
what happens at XYZ
Company?

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“XYZ” assigns Jim and Susan to lead the
investigation and vendor selection process.
Conducts some non branded searches like “Software
solutions that solve everything”
Clicks an organic link to your site
Ignores the PPC links – expects he would be presented with
a landing page and some kind of call to action – he’s just
researching
Reads some analyst reviews and learns that your company
is a leader in the space.
Reviews your products and value proposition on your web
site.
Jim – Marketing manager: early research

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“XYZ” assigns Jim and Susan to lead the
investigation and vendor selection process.
Conducts some searches which lead to some blogs and
other social networking sites for you and your competitors.
Starts following you and your competitor’s twitter handle.
Sees your company sprinkled across the blogs and reviews
and the sentiment appears positive.
Clicks on a link from a blog to your site and starts browsing.
Susan – part of investigation and vendor selection process

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Jim and Susan call a meeting with key stakeholders to start
discussing things – you are in their list of possibilities.
Has concerns on the security and maintenance behind
some of the solutions.
Wants to make sure the solution will fulfill the long term
needs to solve everything forever.
IT Manager
CFO
My people will be using the system – need to ensure
training and support are available and the system is easy to
use.
Operations
Manager They all take actions to research further…

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A group of IT, Operations and Financial staff go to your site
(via mostly branded search – PPC and Organic)
Reports that he has been getting emails from your
company each month with various topics, whitepapers etc.
He saw you at an event last year and left his card.
Reports that she has seen some display advertising for your
company and that you must be a big player in the space.
Fills out a form on your site to get to a whitepaper.
Also fills out a form after a PPC search.

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Your sales people reach out to the people who filled out the
forms and start the direct sales process.
In the mean time…
IT personnel download some white papers on the technical
solution.
Jim starts to build a competitive matrix with information
from your web site..
The CFO attends a sales pitch and goes back to the web site
to check out the management team – he also goes to
LinkedIn.
Operations staff download some product demos and watch
some videos to understand how the product is going to
work for them.

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You become shortlisted and are asked to conduct a small pilot.
The audience for the summary presentation is around 20 people.
Before the presentation most of the audience researches you on the web site.
A couple of key people read a whitepaper that clearly differentiates your solution.

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They select you! … its due diligence time and contracting time.
They research the web looking for negative sentiment.
They read your customer use cases online and ask to speak to those customers.
The contract is signed!

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Back to the question…
“How do I show the organization the value of my digital
marketing and content development?”

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Did your reporting and analysis say…
• Search drove one lead and one lead came from a bookmark or typed url.
Or did your reporting and analysis say…
• This $1M sales was assisted by…
• Non branded organic search driving initial awareness
• Social marketing driving awareness and nurturing the prospects
• Events, display and email driving brand recognition
• Web site general content educating the prospect
• Branded SEO and PPC making leading to engagement and prospect nurturing
• Technical web content dealing with specific objections
• Product demos and videos helping late in the sales cycle
• Leadership bio’s and case studies acting as references
• Over 20 people, all influencers, engaging with multiple marketing channels and web site
assets
Were you able to inform sales that this company was a “hot” lead
and where there may have been issues during the sales cycle?

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Use Case – Demonstration of the Key Principles
Get the attribution right.
• Use the data to understand the attribution
• Apply the correct model
• Model may be different depending on intent
• Pay attention to cross channel

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Attribution Models
In Visit – Participatory Model In Visit – Last Touch Model
One Week– Participatory Model One Week– Last Touch Model
Investigate different models to determine which is best
suited. In this case “One Week - Last Touch Model”

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Channel Crossover Analysis
Majority of traffic is
single channel
Use cross
When there is
channel analysis crossover, patterns
to determine if it of channel flow
emerge
should built into
attribution model

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Use Case – Demonstration of the Key Principles
Measure at the Individual and Opportunity level
• Aggregate individuals into opportunities
• By IP Address (unknown visitors)
• By eMail domain (known visitors)
• By company (known visitors)
• By direct connection to an opportunity (known visitors connected
to CRM)
• Measure marketing based on connection to an opportunity rather than
an individual conversion

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Example Opportunity “Lookback”
Opportunity Reporting report
Campaigns and Website
Assets touched Pages
by Opportunity touched by
Visitors Opportunity
Visitors

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Opportunity Based Metrics
“Pct Opportunity Visitors” identifies people associated with a CRM opportunity
– even if they are unknown.
Channels that drive leads do not necessarily align with channels that
nurture the pipeline
Evaluate
campaigns and
Marketing Assets
based on
Opportunity
nurturing.

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#2 - Focus budget and effort
Measure & Optimize on:
> full sales funnel
> marketing objectives

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Use Case – Demonstration of the Key Principles
Measure based on the full sales funnel
• Connect the web to lead nurturing
and CRM systems
• Create conversion metrics
based on the funnel stages

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Funnel Based Metrics
Channel
Web site based Lead Nurturing and CRM
metrics based metrics
Campaign or Asset

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Use Case – Demonstration of the Key Principles
Measure based on marketing objective
• Awareness, Interest, Action and Value
• Create metrics and rollup metrics
that evaluate objective vs. intent

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Metrics by Intent
Acquisition/Awareness
Metrics
Interest/Engagement
Metrics
Action/Conversion
Metrics
Value Metrics

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Intent Scoring
Metrics Weighted and
Aggregated into
General Scores

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# 3 - Become a partner with sales
> Inform sales on
prospect behavior
> Alert sales on
new potential
and hot prospects

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• If you are applying these principles, you
have the ability to inform sales…
• Which opportunities are engaged and
active.
• Which individuals are active.
• What different roles are interested in
within the opportunity
• Predict which companies are in the
pre-opportunity stage

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Engagement as a Sales Predictor
Measure of Change in
Recent Web Activity engagement engagement for Factor
(predictor to previous period representing
sales) engagement and
change

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Activity Report
eMail
addresses
Campaigns and Web Site Pages
Assets touched by touched by
Company Visitors Company Visitors

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Re-Cap
1. Demonstrate the value of marketing
• Apply the correct attribution
• Look at company-level ‘opportunities’
2. Focus budget and effort
• Measure and optimize based on full sales funnel
• Measure and optimize based on marketing objectives
3. Become a partner with sales
• Inform sales on prospect behavior
• Alert sales on new potential and hot prospects

37. San Francisco | August 13–17, 2012 | #sessf
Discussion / Questions
I’m Rob Cataford, VP Customer
Intelligence BusinessOnline
Based in Ottowa, Canada
Rob.Cataford@businessol.com
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robcataford
You can find this deck on
the SES website or at
Slideshare.net/BusinessOnline