What works, what doesn't, and what's changing
Section 3
It’s no secret that the board’s primary interest is revenue, as this is fundamental to the health and stability of any organisation. That’s not changing any time soon. What is changing, however, is how marketers frame their activities to demonstrate their impact on revenue to the board.
"I run marketing like sales… and this is what the board loves,” says Gursaran Marjara, CMO at Access Group. “They start each board meeting by going to me first and asking what the pipeline creation engine is delivering for the organisation."
At Access Group, the marketing team is not only judged on marketing sourced pipeline, but also the total pipeline that the company needs.
This is because, regardless of attribution, the board is interested in current indicators of growth and data-driven projections for the future.
Using total pipeline as a benchmark for the overall performance of marketing has enforced the need for the marketing department to work closely with the sales teams, and other functions within the business.
Access Group has taken a pragmatic approach that focuses more on top-level targets than departmental attributions, and this strategy is increasingly common throughout the industry.
Of course, looking only at total pipeline with shared attributions will paint a picture in broad strokes. Drill-down metrics and indicators still have a role to play for informing more complex budgetary decisions, or identifying inefficiencies and underperforming departments.
“There are a zillion different metrics that we can look at, and we’ve got a great marketing technology stack, so it’s a closed loop system,” Gursaran says, “[but] the crucial thing is pound notes. It’s not the number of leads, or awareness, or the number of people attending events.”
Furthermore, even though there are a wide range of KPIs that can be put forward to the board as evidence of the effect that marketing is having – there are still vital elements of marketing’s contribution across the customer journey which are not being adequately being measured.
"Marketing is a combination of the science of marketing and its data-driven approach with the art of marketing, which is the creativity – you can’t forget that”, warns Gursaran."
At Cybereason, Kyle Flaherty explains that their marketing department has monthly meetings with the board, as well as quarterly – a practice that he implores other marketers to embrace, as it provides the board with a more comprehensive view of how their investment is generating value. This can also help to drive the integration of marketing throughout the company.
“For our board, they love to look at things like ‘what’s the contribution to revenue?’. It starts there, and it should, but then they layer on some more leading and trailing indicators, such as ‘what’s the contribution of qualified pipeline?’, ‘where is marketing influencing – as well sourcing – that qualified pipeline?’ And this comes in a variety of different flavours.”
The fact remains: in the boardroom, focus will always return to the bottom line. For marketing departments, the priority must be presenting new lenses through which their contribution can be viewed.
The fact remains: in the boardroom, focus will always return to the bottom line.
It’s clear that marketing needs to find new lenses for presenting its impact on growth, and relaying this information quickly and clearly. According to the marketers we spoke to, they are placing greater emphasis on the following areas:
Brand: increasingly, boards are interested in how brands are driving preference among target audiences. In the next five years, B2B marketers will be investing more heavily in their brand, partially adopting a long-term view of increasing revenue in a manner that cannot necessarily be measured in terms of short-term pipeline.
Pipeline: the board will never lose its focus on pipeline. As discussed, this will often be viewed as an overarching indicator, regardless of specific contributions from individual departments. The challenge is broadening the scope of pipeline to include individual touchpoints with the brand that drive revenue opportunities and lifetime value.
Customer experience: it’s all very well measuring outcomes such as revenue and pipeline, but ultimately the customer’s experience of the brand will impact customer lifetime value. For the customer, their experience of a business will be one whole picture. Marketing must seek to meet customer expectations by presenting the business as a unified front.
Considering brand development, and how to measure success in this area, Gursaran claims: “We’ve started [investing heavily in the brand] now, and the reason is to drive pipeline creation. It’s not brand for brand’s sake; it’s brand for demand. So, share of search and share of voice will be key KPIs.”
Meanwhile, for Kyle, measuring CX will be key: “I think that, as we move along and become more mature in our marketing, it will go back to the customer value. It will go back to things like, not just looking at churn rate, but also usage.”
And the important question:
"How much are customers – while they’re in your product – interacting with your brand?"
The difficulty with viewing each of these topics in isolation is that they are interdependent – all exerting an influence on each other, and ultimately pointing in the direction of overarching growth. Clarifying each of these three areas will be of increasing importance for board presentations, but exactly which KPIs can communicate value most effectively are yet to be set in stone.
It’s always fascinating to hear CMOs relate their experiences. At Twogether, we also navigate the intrinsic connections between the strategic levers of brand, demand and CX for our clients.
The leading tech companies we work with are aware that most of their audience are not currently “looking to buy”. And so we’re seeing – with increasing regularity – businesses investing in long-term brand growth to create demand for the future, while also providing clear reasons to buy now.
Brand is essential for creating affinity and preference, and especially important when crowded markets result in parity of product features and pricing. Aligning brand values creates strong emotional connections with B2B buyers, which feeds directly into customer experience. Both of which drive demand and make positive contributions to revenue.
