Marketing metrics are a minefield: What to report on? Can you trust the data? How should you interpret the stats? View this short presentation which identifies five common problems with marketing metrics and outlines three different types of metrics, including a marketing metrics hierarchy that provides pointers on what to measure, and with whom to share the metrics.

1. Lies, damned lies,
and marketing metrics
What should you measure?
Are you confident in
your ROI metrics?
What do the
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metrics
mean?

2. WHY MARKETERS
NEED METRICS
Measure performance
Inform stakeholders
o
Track closed loop
Meet objectives
Gain budget

3. THE PROBLEM WITH
MARKETING METRICS: #1
• Numbers have strong persuasive powers, but are
sometimes used to support spurious claims.
The only way is up!
Marketing Qualified
Sales Leads

4. THE PROBLEM WITH
MARKETING METRICS: #2
• Interpretation bias can lead marketers to come
to self-serving conclusions
Website traffic, time spent on
page and page views per
visitor are all up! Our
marketing campaigns are
delivering real results!
Sales are down! They must be
doing something wrong
downstairs in the sales
department!

5. THE PROBLEM WITH
MARKETING METRICS: #3
• Need to compare apples with apples, not bananas
Product A
Product B
Product A is getting far more inbound
enquiries than product B. There must be a
problem with product B’s marketing!

6. THE PROBLEM WITH
MARKETING METRICS: #4
• Too much to measure, too little time to analyse
I started this
monthly
marketing
metrics report
two years ago.

7. THE PROBLEM WITH
MARKETING METRICS: #5
Mind the marketing
skills gap!
New research shows 70% of B2B
marketers admit they have “gaps” in their
skills, the most pressing of which is a lack
of analytics and reporting skills.*
*http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/marketing-tactics/training/too-many-metrics-
the-perils-of-training-marketers-to-calculate-roi/4011551.article

8. THREE TYPES OF METRICS
The ones that are interesting for
marketers
E.g. Clicks, bounce rates, form completions, keyword rankings
The ones you need to share with
stakeholders
E.g. marketing qualified leads, sales accepted leads, conversion rates
The ones that are a waste of time
E.g. Email open rates, since email systems mark emails as opened even if the
cursor is just accidentally pointed at an email

9. WHAT TO MEASURE:
METRICS HIERARCHY
MARKETING METRICS
FOR STAKEHOLDERS
Closed won
deals
Marketing-generated
Deals
Value of
deals
Number of
deals
Sales
accepted
leads
Marketing
qualified
leads
OUTBOUND
Marketing
qualified leads
INBOUND
MARKETING METRICS FOR
MARKETING OPTIMISATION
Campaign
metrics
Response
rates
Clicks,
Unique
clicks
Forwards,
Social
shares
Website
metrics
Conversion
Rate
Bounce
Rate
Traffic
Sources
SEO, PPC, Social,
Direct Entry,
Emails
Number of
Visitors
Event
metrics
Registered/invite
d x 100 =
Response rate
Attendance rate:
Participants ,
no-shows, early
leavers
Engagement
metrics, e.g.
survey
responses,
information
requests,
Twitter
mentions

10. MARKETING METRICS
ADVICE:
Only use metrics that you have complete confidence in – i.e.
only those you yourself can drill into and explain.
Only 2 in 3 marketers actually measure
return on investment (ROI).
Of those that do, fewer than 1 in 5 (16%)
are confident in the accuracy of their
results.*
*http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/marketing-tactics/training/too-many-metrics-the-perils-of-training-
marketers-to-calculate-roi/4011551.article

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