This article was originally written by Susan Borst for the IAB
When it comes to Key Performance Indicators, KPIs, we wanted to know what were viewed as the most important in the B2B digital space so we put out a call to IAB B2B Committee members to answer the question:
What key performance indicators (KPIs) are most important to your business and/or your client’s business and why?
Knowing the diverse composition of our nearly 150 active committee members, we expected diversity in responses, but one resounding similarity shone through which was that B2B marketers have moved well beyond the click as a leading metric of success and are moving toward a more holistic view of digital campaign effectiveness.
As you’ll see in the responses below, regardless of where the B2B leader sits in the B2B ecosystem, when it comes to KPIs, there is much for a B2B company to consider to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns including, but not limited to:
When it comes to KPIs, know this: just because it can be counted, doesn’t mean it counts. Take CTR for example. Once a standard metric for measuring the efficacy of campaigns, fat fingers and fraud have weakened its standing. CTR, CPC, and CPL: metrics like these measure tactics that apply to a specific stage of the buying cycle and can be measured on their own. But as you rise up the scale of performance measurement tactics, you find the increasing convergence of both attribution and value. It’s more valuable to know that your message was served to the right audience than it is to know a click. When you’re running an account based marketing program, lesser measurement tactics should be tied directly to the account so that they point to the KPIs that really matter, the ones that prove real ROI: deal velocity, deal size, pipeline, conversions.