As some of the regular readers of this column may have picked up, I am a voracious reader, casting my net widely in my quest for interesting content.
One of my regular ‘go to’ sources of inspiration is the excellent Mi3 newsletter, an Australian publication usually penned by Andrew Birmingham. In terms of insights into marketing best practice – both global and local – it’s absolutely up there with the best.
Catching my eye from them recently was a piece around lead generation in B2B marketing, the thrust of which was to question whether leads were the right metric by which we should be measuring the effectiveness of our marketing spend.
Obviously, this flies in the face of much of the commentary floating around for several years now – which generally goes along the lines of:
- Forget about your vanity metric (impressions, click through rates, web traffic etc)
- The C-Suite want more hard, tangible measures of the business contribution of marketing,
- Ergo, we need to measure leads.
The sales team usually advocate along these lines too.
Back to the article, which references two experts who contend that B2B marketers should shift their focus from counting leads to understanding and influencing buying groups.
Quoting research that suggests the circa 80% of buying decisions are made long before engagement with a seller, they suggest that most potential buyers are engaging with a brand’s content early, and anonymously, meaning that measuring leads in the traditional way is really only reflecting the tip of the iceberg.
In other words, marketing is underselling itself (ouch).
It also means that more needs to be done to influence potential buyers as early as possible – meaning that the obsession with putting content behind an ‘email gate’ (to capture, you guessed it, leads) is more than likely counterproductive. Rather than ensuring buyers are accessing your gated content when they are ready to buy, they are instead driven towards the ungated content of your competitors.
(I must admit I understand the psychology of marketers who think ‘I’ve invested in creating this fabulous piece of content, I can’t just give it away for free’. But the thing is, if you give it away for free, more people will read it, be influenced by it, and think better of your brand as a result. Surely that’s a better outcome?).
Perhaps we should run a ‘Free the Content’ campaign?
The more I scouted around, the more I realised others were in this ‘move beyond the lead’ camp.
For example, a Forrester Research study, “Redefining B2B Marketing Measurement,” found that “the metrics that most B2B marketers say they use — like number of leads generated and cost per lead” — rank in the lower half of the effectiveness list.”
And focusing on cost per lead – and allocating resources towards the activities with the lowest cost – could well be taking us down another counter-productive rabbit hole too, especially as we know not all leads are created equal.
Shifting the focus onto influence, rather than lead generation can be a hard conversation to have, after all it’s been the language of sales teams and B2B executives for years.
And how do you even measure influence?
At its simplest level you need to link activity to outcomes.
Data is obviously critical. Data which can tell you who has engaged with your content and when, how they reacted to it, and what other content have they engaged with. Listens, reads, likes, shares, minutes watched, are all crucial pointers. Ultimately that data trail should be linked back to people who engaged with you more deeply, attended an event perhaps, or ultimately, purchased from you.
Accessing this depth of data can obviously be a challenge, particularly at a time when the third-party cookie is being phased out (although Google recently delayed the complete phase out AGAIN), and particularly if you are giving your content away for free.
The key may well be data captured within a platform where content is distributed.
Ring any bells?
If you are targeting financial advisors, and want to talk influence, measurement, data and more, we’d love to hear from you.
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