Do you know what CEOs want most from B2B marketers? They want clarity about marketing results.
CEOs lament, “Why can’t I see clear measures and ROI from our marketing?” They expect their marketing leaders to provide clear metrics and be accountable to meeting their numbers just like their sales leaders.
These CEOs get frustrated because their marketing leaders share metrics like sales lead activity KPIs, engagement reports, and some squishy metrics around a brand that aren’t tied directly to revenue.
The State of B2B Marketing Metrics
For example, I read this chart via MarketingCharts about the State of B2B marketing metrics. 
They report, “The majority of senior B2B marketers are using basic marketing analytics tools such as web analysis (91%) and spreadsheets (80%)…” citing a recent report [download page] from Regalix.
Additionally, I found this great comment from Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions in TrustRadius’s new 2016 Buyer’s Guide to Marketing Automation. She sheds light on why this is such an issue. Ardath said:
They [marketers] have a hard time proving value, as they cannot tie to revenue. Many only can do last-touch attribution. They lose visibility once a lead moves into the sales realm. Marketing is often removed once it goes into sales, which is a mistake. There’s no continuous thread.
Read on to learn what you should measure.
You can start working on these six key marketing measures now. I’ve seen marketers who really dig in and answer these big-picture questions get an edge. Also, they ultimately get bigger budgets and have more influence inside and outside their companies.
6 Marketing Measures that Will Give You an Edge
Here are six big-picture questions you can answer work on solving and measuring to give you an edge to help your CEO get clarity.
- What’s the impact are your marketing investments making on sales productivity? On the sales pipeline? On revenue velocity?
- What’s your return on your marketing investment (ROMI)? How much are you putting in marketing and what are you getting out in revenue? The difference between these two numbers gets expressed as a percentage.
- How many and what percentage of your new customers are marketing generated (i.e. what customers started via a marketing lead). Also, this measurement is easier to track if you have a closed loop system.
- What has your marketing done to help shorten our time-to-revenue? What has your marketing done to lower the combined expense-to-revenue ratio of sales and marketing activities?
- How much revenue can you attribute to sales leads coming from your marketing or lead generation efforts over a given period?
- What’s your customer acquisition cost (CAC)? What’s the total cost of your lead account-based marketing or generation efforts during a particular period? This number includes Marketing team total compensation, Vendors, marketing technology, costs, and materials)
Here’s a cheat sheet of CEO-level marketing measurements from HubSpot
6 Marketing metrics your CEO actually cares about Source: hubspot.com
Conclusion
I’ve suggested 6 B2B marketing measures to you an edge and give your CEO clarity. These are high-level measures will are supported by more detailed metrics you need to dig in to gather and use with your team and share with other departments. Please comment and share your insights with fellow readers. What B2B marketing metrics are most important for CEOs?
