Measuring ROI for marketing is challenging even in the best of cases. Many industrial marketers confuse commonly used online B2C metrics with effective measures for their endeavors. However, the effectiveness of marketing can impact business outcomes such as sales growth and customer loyalty. With so many variables and elements to test, how can industrial marketers measure the success of their marketing campaigns?
How do you define marketing success?
Clicks not only help you achieve your business goals, they also help new customers. So the exact measure of KING Real new business opportunities should arise for any online marketing program.
Yet too many industrial marketers are concerned with axes that measure clicks, pageviews, traffic, conversions, and other “visitor” metrics that, frankly, could be great for the B2C world, but not the full picture of marketing success for B2B suppliers convey .
Too often in the search engine / SEO world, visitors to your website do other things than discovering and evaluating suppliers. In other words, they don’t always represent real new business opportunities. There are many reasons for that:
- A healthy percentage of your search engine traffic usually comes from people you already know. Often times, they’re just looking for your phone number, email address, and product information – whatever they’re looking for, they’re not New Business opportunity.
- Related keyword searches may not bring valuable traffic to your website. As a simplified example, let’s say you are a dice maker. Someone looking for “die casting” may just be researching die casting processes. Or interested in buying die casting equipment or materials. Or maybe even looking for die cast toys. None of them represent a real new business opportunity.
- Unfortunately there is fraud. Unless you are diligent Setting Your PPC Campaigns For Successyour ads may be dirty fake clicks and bots. In other words, you could be paying for junk that isn’t really a new business opportunity.
Measuring the right thing depends on the user’s intent.
B2B tools to measure the success of your online efforts
Most web analytics tools have a feature that says that this keyword will add value when a user searches for a term, clicks on your ad or link, and goes to a specific page. By doing industrial B2B buying processA single visit doesn’t always result in an instant sale. The industrial purchasing process can be lengthy and many steps are taken before an engineer, procurement professional or MRO manager submits an inquiry or contacts you.
So does that mean the data is not meaningful? Absolutely not.
To get the most out of web analytics tools, you first need to document your marketing goals, such as: B. Contact list growth, website traffic increase, etc. Then ask the right questions. Why do users only visit these pages and not others? Why do they spend a certain amount of time on the website? On a certain side? Industrial marketers who are ahead of the curve know that the “who” and the “why” are far more important than the “how many” when it comes to measuring the ROI of your online efforts.
With Thomasnet.com we give you a preview of the “who” by giving you a free custom opportunity report from companies that recently used our platform to find suppliers who do exactly what you do. As soon as you are one Advertiser on Thomasnet.comYou have full access to powerful analysis tools and reports that show you exactly who found, rated and contacted you through our platform.
Corrugated metals set a record for quotes in the first year of listing on Thomasnet.com, increasing quarterly quotes by 197% year over year. According to our sourcing activity, a buyer or engineer visits Thomasnet.com every second to source products and look for new suppliers. However, they cannot contact you if your company is not listed.
As for the “why”, visitors to the Thomasnet.com platform have mostly one purpose: to find and evaluate suppliers to meet a specific purchase need – that is the only reason the platform exists. Visitors who appear on your Thomas ROI report have qualified as serious buyers through their actions on our platform – they are highly skilled designers, procurement managers and MROs.
For example, if a page on the website has a high bounce rate, meaning that users spend a short time on a page before hitting the back button, it may be because the user couldn’t find what they wanted and immediately has left . However, it could also be because the user found the information they were looking for – a description of the product components, a phone number, a process definition, etc.
If the analysis software provides enough data, this can be investigated further. Sometimes certain software can identify the company browsing the website, e.g. Thomas WebTrax. If it is an existing customer, the data provides the ability to see when they were first on the site, if viewed from multiple locations / people or mostly the same person.
There is a lot of data out there – and real-time data from tools is critical to maximizing your ROI across marketing channels. To really get the most out of the data, we recommend using multiple tools at the same time for a full picture of effectiveness. Many manufacturers and industrial companies connect Thomas WebTrax with Google Analytics and Ahrefs to monitor how visitors interact with the pages and convert them into leads.
Need to have: Must-have digital marketing apps and tools (including free ones)
For example, a user who searched for your company name is at a different stage in the buying cycle than someone who searched for a specific product category like “ball bearings”. The former is likely very aware of your company’s offerings – it’s a hot tip! The latter has potential and requires a little more effort (although it’s also worth pursuing).
Alternatively, if the user is looking for a vague term with multiple meanings like “pump”, the question remains whether this means women’s shoes or a mechanical device. Further SEO analysis could indicate that your website’s keyword affiliation needs refining. At Thomas, the industry marketing experts can carry out a free SEO audit for you – request yours digital health check here.
Success in B2B marketing in a world without trade fairs
The reality is that digital marketing provides real-time data that you can use to define how effective your marketing strategies are. In contrast, quantifying personal event metrics can be more difficult. Personal events have stalled today and a 12% increase in manufacturers has switched to digital marketing budgets. (The full industry report can be found here.)
With digital marketing and its tools, you can understand the entire sales cycle within the organization of a known or potential customer. This can be of infinite value in creating the right kind of content and campaigns to keep an eye on your business.
Remember, not all leads are created equal. Hence, it is important to emulate your personal sales process with your website. Your emails, display advertisementsand videos are perfect channels for tracking ROI and should all be designed with the industrial buying process in mind – click here for 13 industry videos that helped close the sale.
Measure the number of qualified leads (MQLs vs SQLs vs unqualified leads) and their quality rate, if possible (decision makers, influencers, non-decision makers). Additionally, you should measure how many leads generated from your marketing efforts make an appointment with your sales team and how many meetings are about to make a sale.
Not sure how to match your ROI expectations to the realities of today’s industrial buying cycle? Our in-market buyer report shows you companies that are currently browsing your manufacturing and industrial services, relevant online behaviors during this period and how these behaviors ultimately lead to a real new business opportunity for you. Request your free report and learn how to increase your reach for engineers, procurement managers, and MROs and effectively reduce customer acquisition costs Online marketing campaigns from Thomas.
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