Marketing metrics

Most metrics developed by B2b marketing teams tend to not be used over the long term. I think this happens for a few key reasons:

1. Marketing people tend not to be operations or engineering-minded.
2. The demand for metrics tend to be driven from outside of the marketing team so once the urgency dies down, the metrics do too.
3. Teams make the mistake of trying to measure too many things.

With that said, most people buy into the simple premise that you should use metrics in marketing or any discipline as it is easier to improve performance of you measure it. It also becomes much easier to protect or increase your budget if you can point to real results. We are going through an effort to come up with metrics that we will use over the long term. Here are the characteristics of metrics that I believe make sense.

1. The need should be driven from within the marketing team - from the VP or CMO to start with
2. The metrics need to be truly within the control of the marketing team
3. You should use one metric for all of marketing or one metric for each core area e.g. demand generation/nurturing; awareness and sales team enablement.
4. The team should be empowered to develop their own metrics
5. They need to be used

I'll come back on this with a report of how things turned out.

B2B branding - what's important

We want to update our positioning and I have been doing a lot of reading, talking and soul-searching about B2B branding. Here is a list of things that I think are important. Some of them are obvious and some of them are not.

1. Positioning is what you would like people to think about you. Your brand is what they actually think about you.

2. It can work for B2B

3. Brand = emotion

4. Brand does not = logo

5. The natural tendency in B2B marketing is to come up with conservative, "me too" positioning. I think the primary reason for this is a fear of failure.

6. To come up with a unique, credible position takes a lot of things but, above all, courage to follow your conviction.

7. Marketing's job should be a coach when it comes to branding. The key supporter has to be the CEO. If you don't have that don't start. It will not be embraced.

8. The most important area to focus is your employees not external parties. If your employees don't buy in you have failed. The majority of your customer touch points will be with your employees or with tools created by your employees.

9. You should use a vendor to help you as they are unbiased. You cannot be.

10. You should choose a vendor that specializes in branding and choose from at least three firms.