By In a perfect world, ROI would be measured by this equation: Value Created by Investment - Cost of investment = Return on Investment.
But in the real world of B2B tech marketing, measuring ROI is rarely that simple. You have delayed and long-term ROI. You have intangible ROI in the form of brand awareness, engagement, digital word-of-mouth, and affinity.
Despite the challenges of capturing return on investment, throwing your hands up in defeat is not an option. You're here because you have your eye on proving your value to C-suite. You understand the value of consistent ROI. It's critical for the long-term health and growth of the business and your career.
5 Critical Factors That Impact ROI
1. Customer Acquisition Costs
The CAC should go down year over year, not up, despite inflation. Each year, your visibility among your ideal buyers and your relationship with them improves. Conversion rates go up, and more prospects come to you. Leads are sales-ready and flow consistently.
More happy customers are writing amazing reviews. That's instant trust. It's convincing people like them to jump on board, shortening the sales cycle in the process.
2. Average Order Value and Customer Lifetime Value
AOV and CLV are incredibly vital metrics to measure B2B ROI. You're bringing in the right audience and connecting with them with the right messages at the right time. You have a consistent method to convert strangers from MQLs to SQLs. You smoothly hand them off to sales at the perfect time through lead scoring automation.
You employ surveys and analytics to listen to customers, so you can communicate through inbound marketing about how your solutions solve their problems. You know how to make the case that they should upgrade to higher pay tiers and stick with you.
3. Organic Website Traffic
As you build a brand that connects with B2B customers, more traffic comes through to you — direct and organic. You rank higher in the search results for queries vital to your B2B marketing efforts.
You're consistently publishing inbound content to attract your target persona. You're personalizing your sales funnel to align with the buyer's journey and guide more people through your site and the buyer’s journey.
4. Better Marketing-Sales Alignment
Any contention between marketing and sales disappears. This has most definitely improved ROI in action.
You've worked hard to unify sales and marketing, ensure they agree on what an SQL is and are working toward shared goals. Through inbound marketing, marketing automation, lead scoring, and sales enablement content, the united team both consistently delivers high-quality leads and closes them.
Bonus: B2B technology marketing and sales like and value each other. Morale goes up. There's less complaining and blame-throwing. They're more productive because of it.
5. Bottom Line
Higher tech ROI directly impacts the bottom line. You're generating higher revenues faster and at a lower cost. All of this doesn't happen overnight. But this is the direction you want your B2B marketing to move toward. This is how to achieve a positive ROI.
Time and again, research proves it. It all starts with measuring ROI. This shows you the benefits of employing long-term branding and efficiency strategies to impact it.
What Are The Odds of Positive ROI?
Interestingly, research shows that the act of consistently measuring ROI increases ROI.
One such study was conducted by Les Binet and Peter Field, researchers for LinkedIn. They looked at several decades of campaign data from B2B technology companies. They found that those who included long-term ROI measures in their metrics positively impacted their bottom 400% more often than those who weren't measuring it.
Face it. C-suite can't argue with something that has been shown to increase the bottom line directly.
The same study found that these companies were 50% more likely to meet short-term KPIs like generating MQLs and nurturing them to SQLs.
The study also took a closer look at some of the more successful companies in the study. They found that one of the companies achieved a 316% increase in ROI after two years of increasing its focus on branding initiatives that drive value. Their customer acquisition costs went down by 17%.
Those who are focused on long-term ROI invest in strategies like inbound marketing, which consistently delivers positive ROI, demonstrated through the following current statistics:
- Businesses that blog earn 13% the ROI and get 55% more website traffic
- Inbound marketing's personalized email marketing achieves a 44:1 ROI
- 70% of people say they'd rather learn about your company/product through articles vs. ads.
If you want to learn how to improve tracking and reporting, then start with an assessment. Relequint’s B2B Balanced KPI Scorecard will help align overall business goals with your preferred strategy to increase your B2B tech company’s ROI. Click here to learn more.
