For B2B marketers, choosing the right marketing metrics to define return on investment (ROI) for your marketing spend is often one of the toughest parts of the job. Determing what to measure, how to measure it, and how much weight to give a particular measure can seem equal parts art and alchemy. Combine that with the pressure to demonstrate marketing value to your senior management team, and you may end up spending more time measuring your marketing programs than actually executing.

The most streamlined approach can be to choose a set of metrics that are most relevant to you, your company and your industry, and focus on those. But which ones?

We’ve whittled it down to a short list of key marketing metrics, split into two categories: how to measure activity on your website, and how to calculate your overall marketing ROI.

6 metrics to measure activity on your website

Try using these 6 measurements to gauge the effectiveness of your website:

1. Website visits

   Break this figure out for your main page and any landing pages. This offers a quick but very insightful measure of how your campaigns are doing, and also your overall growth. This is a figure that you’ll want to stick on a post-it or put up on your whiteboard so it is top-of-mind and you can monitor it closely.

2. Time spent on site 

   What do visitors do on your site? Do they explore different pages, look at different types of content, download any offers? Time spent and activity on your site can tell you what your prospects are seeking, and whether your site can provide it. Watch this metric closely when you add new content or a new offer.

3. Bounce rates 

   A bounce is someone who views only the entrance page on your website. If your bounce rates are high, meaning visitors leave almost as soon as they arrive, then something is seriously wrong. This is a red flag requiring your immediate attention. Check into these four areas to determine the problem: 
   
   1) Are you attracting the right visitors?
   2) Are you setting the right expectation for what visitors will find?
   3) What’s the user experience on your site?
   4) Is your content doing its job?

4. Social shares 

   These are an indicator that visitors find enough value in your content that they want to share it to their own personal networks. Once you identify the type of content that results in high social shares, you’ll want to create a lot more of it.

5. Comments 

   Comments are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when it comes to social interaction. Visitors who take the time to post a comment are engaged Of course, a high rate of complaints is a very different story. What we’re talking about here are comments that are positive, and reflect a desire to share an experience with your product, ask a question, or seek interactions with other users.

6. Trial signups 

   If you’re selling software or an app, the number of people who sign up for a free trial is a very important metric. In addition, these visitors have opened the door to a richer interaction with your company, so make the most of this connection.
   
   

SONAR digital marketing analytics tool

Monitoring the impact of your digital marketing across the digital universe is also important. SONAR, Living Stone’s digital marketing analytics tool and reporting service, aggregates all analytics from social media channels, Google Analytics-driven online pubs, e-news engines, and APPs into a single score, to provide you with precise information on the global impact of your digital marketing activities.

6 ways to calculate your marketing ROI

When you’re deciding how to measure ROI for your B2B marketing activities, you want to deliver the measurements that matter to your management, and counter any management concerns.

We’ve narrowed it down to 6 marketing metrics that your boss actually cares about, and that your company execs will understand and respect:

1. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
2. Marketing % of customer acquisitions cost
3. Ratio of customer lifetime value to CAC (LTV:CAC)
4. Time to payback CAC
5. Marketing originated customer %
6. Marketing influenced customer %

We’ve expanded on these metrics in a practical 10-page guide, called The 6 Marketing Metrics Your Boss Actually Cares About, featuring step-by-step instructions for how to calculate each one, including formulas and examples; along with explanations and scenarios of why these metrics are important and how to interpret them.

Download The 6 Marketing Metrics Your Boss Actually Cares About, and get started! This 10-page cheat sheet is easy to use and understand, and will support your marketing activities with solid data.