Traditional B2B marketing metrics (think clicks and conversion rates) tell you something about engagement — but can you clearly demonstrate how that information drive your strategy?
In her 6sense for 6sense presentation, SVP of Marketing and Revenue Analytics Saima Rashid shows how CMOs can adopt more nuanced reporting that clearly demonstrates value to other C-suite executives and board members.
The approach focused on the context of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and how strongly marketing is influencing these key accounts.
In the video, Saima focuses on:
- What should a Chief Market Officer be looking at every quarter?
- What information should they elevate to the board?
“We need to elevate it, make it more strategic, and really frame it in the context of the market,” she said.
Here are some key insights from the video.
Website Traffic
When analyzing traffic, it’s not so much about how many eyeballs were on your website — it’s about how many of the right eyeballs were on your site. Saima recommends narrowing your analysis to web traffic from accounts within your ICP.
Using 6sense, you can create a segment of ICP accounts and upload it into Google Analytics to contextualize where traffic is coming from and its level of engagement. Pay special attention to metrics like:
- Time on page
- Pages per session
- Bounce rate
This data provides insight into whether your content is effectively reaching — and resonating — with your target audience.
Reach and Engagement
Beyond web traffic, CMOs are responsible for ensuring their teams are reaching the right audience and driving the right engagement. Once again, it’s important to look at reach and engagement within the ICP.
Saima shows how the simple report shown below tells you what portion of ICP accounts are engaging with your content over any given timeframe. You can also see which accounts are moving to the next buying stage, demonstrating more interest. You can also compare to previous time periods to understand how you’re trending.
6sense also enables you to get more specific in terms of reach and engagement for your ICP. Get a stack ranking of what types of marketing and sales efforts are having the most impact on reach. Drill down to see how individual campaigns are performing to inform which activities to stop, start, or invest in further.
While it’s important to know which campaigns are reaching your targets, you also need to know which campaigns are driving engagement.
6sense can tell you this, too. For example, if your website is a top driver of engagement, you can see which pages are getting the most attention. Compare these channels, campaigns, and content to determine where to spend more budget or pull back.
Understanding What’s Working — and What Isn’t
To be effective, CMOs need to define what “good” looks like and create a repeatable approach. Saima emphasizes the importance of analyzing closed deals to gain insights into successful approaches. By uploading closed deals into a segment in 6sense, CMOs can uncover rich information about the accounts and deal cycles.
This information includes:
- How many activities it takes to win a deal
- How many personas are engaged
- How many pages those personas are consuming
You can also see keywords buyers used and other competitors they included in their research.
We say it all the time: It’s getting harder and taking longer to win deals. With 6sense, you can quantify every deal with metrics like these and share it with the entire GTM team as they work accounts. If an average deal includes a handful of personas, make sure you’ve got multi-threading strategies in place for those personas. If new topics show up in keyword analysis, ensure the right content is in place to capture demand and address customer needs.
Conclusion
Elevating reporting beyond day-to-day marketing metrics enables CMOs to make strategic decisions for their teams. By framing reports in the context of the market, you can demonstrate your team’s contributions and boost strategic alignment with other departments — amplifying your contribution to the overall success of your company.
