Back in 2005, HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah identified a significant trend in B2B buyer behaviour. A few years later, in their book entitled “Inbound Marketing”, they laid out the fundamentals of this marketing strategy, which has continued to shape how the majority of B2B companies structure their marketing to this day.
Nowadays, most B2B buyers conduct their own research – initially without any personal contact with a supplier. Parts of or even the entire B2B buying process take place online, which is why the targeted use of content marketing is paramount. After all, content tailored precisely to the buyer’s journey serves as a touchpoint with customers and leads prospects step by step along the marketing funnel.
However, one mistake many businesses make is generating expensive content without measuring whether it actually achieves the desired results. Not every company will use the same inbound marketing measures. Moreover, content formats need to be used in a targeted manner and in coordination with the overarching marketing strategy. Only those who know what they want to achieve will select the right inbound measures. And only those who measure these activities using the right metrics will know whether their actions have been successful or not.
Before you start measuring your inbound strategies, you should first establish which goal (or goals) your marketing team is seeking to achieve. The measures or the appropriate content formats will then be built on this. If you want to drive brand awareness, for example, you’ll need a wide reach and so should focus more on SEO and lead generation. If your goal is to boost sales figures, email marketing with an excellent product offering is a fantastic way to position the company better.
Once the goals are set, the following metrics will help keep track of your progress. We’ve created a list of 11 key inbound metrics – organised according to relevant inbound goals.
LinkedIn publishing for B2B companies. What should marketing managers pay attention to for a complete LinkedIn presence?
SEO Goals: Keyword Ranking, Traffic and Traffic Sources, Backlinks
Engagement: Interaktions, Dwell time
E-Mail Marketing: Open Rate and Unsubscribe Rate, Click-through-Rate
Lead Generation: Number of Leads and Lead Quality, MQL to SQL
Conversions: Retention vs. Churn, New vs. Returning Visitors
Acht Länder, acht unterschiedliche Marketing-Prozesse – vor dieser Situation steht Manpower. Die Folge: Uneinigkeit darüber, welche Leads Priorität haben, sowie erschwertes Benchmarking und Austausch über Best Practices.
Um internationale Vergleichbarkeit zu schaffen und Lernprozesse im Unternehmen anzuregen, will das nordeuropäische Marketing-Team um Projektleiterin Tina Hingston ein länderübergreifend konsistentes Lead Scoring und Reporting einführen. Dafür holt sie sich Unterstützung des Strategiepartners andweekly.
Von der herausfordernden und zeitaufwendigen Rekrutierung geeigneter Fachkräfte sind Unternehmen in vielen Branchen und Regionen betroffen. Das Ziel von Manpower ist es, dem Personalmangel weltweit mit innovativen Lösungen zu begegnen. Die ManpowerGroup mit Hauptsitz in den USA und Niederlassungen in rund 80 Ländern zählt zu den weltweit führenden Unternehmen in der Personalbranche.
Kerngeschäft ist die Vermittlung von Fachkräften aus zahlreichen Branchen an Unternehmen, die sich nicht mit zeitaufwendigen Rekrutierungsprozessen beschäftigen wollen. Darüber hinaus hilft Manpower, kurzfristige Personalengpässe zu überbrücken und Produktionsspitzen mit geeigneten Human Resources auf Zeit abzufedern. Zum Unternehmen gehören zahlreiche Tochterunternehmen – darunter auch der IT-Dienstleister Experis, den wir bereits bei seiner Marketing-Strategie unterstützt haben.
Die ManpowerGroup unterhält in jedem Land ein eigenes Marketing-Team, das individuelle Ansätze im Online-Marketing verfolgt. Zwar wurde HubSpot als All-in-one-Plattform für Marketing in den meisten Landesgesellschaften etabliert, doch das HubSpot-Knowhow und der hinterlegte Lead-Management-Prozess sind sehr unterschiedlich.
Das Problem bei Manpower: Die uneinheitlichen Marketing-Prozesse der Landesgesellschaften führen zu inkonsistenter Lead-Qualifizierung: Ein Lead, der in einer Landesgesellschaft als Sales Ready eingestuft wird, kann in einer anderen als Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) eingestuft werden.
Daraus ergeben sich für Manpower folgende Herausforderungen:
Mangelnde Vergleichbarkeit. Unterschiedliche Definitionen und Prozesse machen es schwierig, die Leistung und Effektivität von Marketing-Aktivitäten zwischen verschiedenen Landesgesellschaften zu vergleichen. Ohne einheitliche Standards können sie Best Practices nicht identifizieren und erfolgreiche Strategien kaum replizieren.
Schwierigkeiten bei Zusammenarbeit und Kommunikation. Inkonsistente Definitionen führen immer wieder zu Missverständnissen und Fehlkommunikation zwischen Marketing- und Vertriebsteams, insbesondere wenn diese länderübergreifend zusammenarbeiten.
Verpasste Verkaufschancen. Unterschiedliche und nicht immer optimale Definitionen von MQLs und SQLs bewirken, dass Mitarbeitende bestimmte Leads unter- oder überschätzen. Falsche Prioritäten in der Lead-Bearbeitung kosten wiederum wertvolle Ressourcen.
Standardisierung der Marketing-Automatisierungsprozesse für eine nahtlose Customer Journey in den verschiedenen Manpower-Landesgesellschaften
Entwicklung homogener Dashboards auf globaler Ebene zur einheitlichen Erfassung, Analyse und Vergleich der Performances von Marketing-Kampagnen
Optimierung der CRM-Strategie durch Implementierung von Best Practices für Lead-Erfassung, -Qualifizierung, -Scoring und Reporting mithilfe des HubSpot Marketing Hub
Erzielung von Effizienzgewinnen durch Reduzierung von Inkonsistenzen zwischen den Landesgesellschaften
Erhöhung der Transparenz zwischen den Landesgesellschaften hinsichtlich Lead-Generierung, Lead-Qualität und Marketing-Performance zur Verbesserung der Entscheidungsfindung und Performance
If you can nail SEO on the head, you’ll definitely enjoy a large reach and increasing brand awareness. Use these metrics to measure whether your company’s content gets the attention it deserves.
Using the right keywords will ensure you occupy the top positions in the ranking results. Corresponding keyword search engines help you find the best search phrases that will elevate the content right to the top. These include Google Search Console, Ahrefs and Ubersuggest.
If you want to monitor whether your website is actually found and visited, then traffic metrics are for you. You’ll see which subpages are popular, which is particularly important when it comes to thinking about the blog posts. You can see the number of visits in the Google Search Console, as well as find out the source of the traffic to the pages.
Website A refers to website B via a hyperlink. Website B then says “thank you” by linking back to website A (backlink). If your website is backlinked on lots of other websites, this indicates to Google that your website is highly relevant and will have a positive impact on your ranking. It goes without saying that these should be high-quality backlinks, although it doesn’t matter whether they are linked to your homepage or sub-pages.
One of the most important currencies in the online world is engagement. As a result, the figures concerning community engagement are absolutely vital. Keep an eye on these metrics:
Whether it’s shared content, comments or mentions, social media simply doesn’t work without user interaction. Look at the insights from each platform to see which posts, topics and formats work best.
How long visitors spend on your page tells you whether they find your content relevant and interesting and whether it offers solutions to their pain points. Google Analytics provides you with insights into this and other data. If you created your website using HubSpot, you’ll find more information about dwell time directly under Reporting.
Whether it’s newsletters or product emails – the golden ticket to increasing your conversion rates is capturing your customers’ attention. Keep the following figures in mind as you monitor the success of your measures:
The open rate forms the basis of your analysis. If an email is not opened, there is nothing to measure. You can of course seek to improve this by trying out new subject lines. If you have a high unsubscribe rate, it’s prudent to allow unsubscribers to give a reason as to why they did so. This way, you can better respond to the wishes of the target group and make appropriate adjustments where necessary.
This metric tells you which products or content your readers would like to learn more about. Pay particular attention to placing relevant links and CTAs to redirect visitors and generate conversions where appropriate.
Acquiring new leads is high on the priority list in inbound marketing. In this regard, it would be true to say that many roads lead to Rome. The following metrics show whether your marketing campaigns are generating the desired results.
When it comes to lead generation, many think in terms of the quantity. A large pool of leads looks great in the statistics and shows which channels work best. But as is often the case in life, quality plays a more significant role in converting leads into customers in the long run. In this regard, lead scoring can be used to assess lead quality.
This metric also refers to lead quality and looks at which marketing leads are converted into sales leads. The result informs you whether your lead management strategy is working or whether some restructuring is necessary if too few MQLs are converting.
Converting leads into customers is the primary goal of every sales funnel. Although inbound marketing is primarily concerned with the phases before the deal is closed, looking at direct sales and customer loyalty also supplies information about where content marketing can help you close more deals. The following metrics will help you do this:
The churn rate is a crucial metric when it comes to analysing the customer base, especially with regard to subscriptions. A high churn rate should always be investigated more closely, as the reasons are often many and varied. To tackle possible churn, content marketing can provide additional information that both supports your customer service team and offers answers to potential questions and solutions to common problems.
The returning visitors metric reveals how helpful your leads find the provided content. Especially for products or solutions that require some explanation or involve a large initial investment, this metric shows that interested users are keeping an eye on the offering.
Selecting the right tools and technologies is crucial for efficiently tracking and analysing inbound marketing metrics. Here are some of the key tools that can help you achieve your marketing goals:
By combining these tools, you can get a comprehensive view of the performance of your content-driven marketing strategy and make informed decisions to optimise.
KPI dashboards are valuable tools for clearly presenting key inbound marketing metrics and tracking the progress of your marketing efforts in real-time. Here are some examples of KPI dashboards you can use:
By using these KPI dashboards, you can ensure that you always have a clear overview of the performance of your company’s inbound marketing efforts and make informed decisions to optimise the strategy.