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.

Why is it so hard to measure ROI for B2B marketing activities? Because it is hard – B2B marketing is complex, it involves multiple parts of your organization, and it takes place over a long period of time. In comparison, measuring return on investment for B2C marketing initiatives is easy. You run an ad, you observe the impact on sales. Or you monitor the path from first contact with your website to an online order. It’s a simple action/reaction model, with the measurement metric built right in.