What if the way we measure marketing and content in most B2B organizations today is the roadblock preventing business growth? In this issue of GrowthSparks, we’re talking marketing measurement.
Today, we’re climbing to the top of the marketing measurement pyramid, where we’ll explore the three key pillars of marketing measurement that B2B leaders like you should care about.
Content is a Common Thread
In B2B organizations today, content is a common thread that connects all aspects of the business, such as sales, marketing, customer success, manufacturing, regulatory, human resources, to name a few
Given the vast footprint and potential impact of content across our organizations, savvy B2B leaders strategically manage content for their business, enabling them to extract long-term value from their investment.
Evolution of Marketing Measurement: My Early Years
In April 2011, I was excited to take on a new professional challenge. I had accepted a promotion to become the global communications manager at a B2B organization. I envisioned a bright, exciting future where we took a more strategic, data-driven approach to marketing.
My team and I embraced the challenge of formally establishing earned and owned media tracking processes and measurement reporting. We analyzed data, crafted insights, and were excited to share our results.
The first media report we rolled out was beautiful. We created a report that was quick and easy for our audience to consume. We crafted it to be highly visual. It featured an infographic-style format with bite-sized chunks of data and insights. We were mindful not to data-dump.
Fast forward to distribution day for that new report, and I could hardly contain my excitement. I thought to myself, “Finally, we are equipped to measure and improve our marketing performance consistently. This is exciting!"
New Report: Lessons Learned
Here’s what I learned as we rolled out that new marketing measurement report to our internal stakeholders.
For our global marketing team:
- The report delivered clear value. It helped us become more agile, identifying and responding to insights based on measurable results.
- It also helped us better align on how to prioritize our earned and owned media budget spend for content initiatives.
- It was relevant and actionable to us as marketers.
I felt happy. We’d hit the mark for reporting results at the bottom of the marketing measurement pyramid. This report served our marketing team well for several years to come.
But here’s the thing. I learned so much more when we rolled out this report to our business leaders.
For our business leaders:
- When my business leaders received that same report, they told me they thought the new report looked great.
- However, they struggled to extract business value from the report.
Their candid feedback was immensely insightful and highly valuable to me early on in my journey to understand the nuances of effective marketing measurement.
Although the report fell short in delivering value to our business leaders, it ignited a spark of curiosity within me that burned brightly for years to come.
What and how should we be measuring marketing to demonstrate content and marketing’s business value? That’s the question.
We needed to find a more effective measurement strategy for this audience at the top of the measurement marketing pyramid.
An Unlikely Inspiration for Measurement Excellence
Fast forward, and I'm attending a monthly staff meeting at that same B2B company. When it was my turn, I shared a few updates, including the best results from our most recent monthly media report. The audience was not particularly captivated by what I had to share.
The last team to present was finance. As my finance colleague began to share the update, I slowly glanced around the room.
What I noticed was an immediate increase in audience engagement. Senior leaders were paying close attention to what the finance team had to say. This audience was engaged.
After that meeting, I asked myself one important question: “What is the finance team’s superpower?”
Here’s what I discovered. I believe the finance team’s superpower came from two sources:
- The results they reported were directly tied to actual business results.
- Finance reported on past events and, importantly, their expectations for the future.
As marketing and content pros, we need to challenge ourselves to harness the same superpower when defining and assessing the business-level contributions of content and marketing to the overall organization.
In essence, we need to “Be like finance!”
I often share this mantra with my clients as they embark on their marketing measurement journey, especially in B2B organizations where marketing is less established compared to commercial sales or technical service teams.
3 Key Pillars: Content and Marketing Measurement
So, this brings us back to the question, what should effective marketing measurement look like at the top of the measurement pyramid? And how can we ensure marketing speaks the same language as the rest of the B2B leaders in our organization?
To get to the bottom of this, I read a lot of marketing books. This included several books authored by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and Robert Rose, who was a founding member of that CMI team.
I also became a two-time graduate of Content Marketing University, taught by Robert Rose. Their books and the Content Marketing University program had a profound impact on me professionally.
Here’s what Joe and Robert taught me about the top of the measurement marketing pyramid. Three key pillars matter. Those pillars are:
- Subscribe
- Win, and
- Grow
When applied effectively, these pillars provide a simple yet powerful measurement framework for the top of the marketing measurement pyramid.
When applying this framework as part of your overall marketing measurement strategy, we can report marketing results directly tied to actual business results. And we can report on past events and our expectations for the future.
7 Marketing Measurement Questions You Should Be Asking
If you’re ready to start aligning your content and marketing measurement for business growth, be sure to download my Top 7 B2B Marketing Measurement Starter Questions Checklist.
Answering these 7 starter questions is a great place to begin your measurement journey when you want to assess, at an actual business level within your organization, the contribution of content and marketing.