Setting marketing goals for B2B companies is something that IV-LEAD has done countless times before. Our team assists in establishing destinations while tracking the many processes involved in reaching them.
Several KPIs are used to track progress toward your marketing goals. Every business should track a few KPIs, no matter what industry they are in or who they are targeting.
Here are a few we've compiled - We'll discuss what they are, why they are important, and how to track them effectively.
What are B2B marketing KPIs?
HubSpot contributor Rebecca Riserbato explains that key performance indicators (KPIs) measure how well your company is performing against long-term goals.
In other words, B2B marketing KPIs are data points marketers use to monitor and measure the progress of business-to-business (B2B) marketing initiatives (such as website campaigns or email marketing).
It kind of sounds like a metric, doesn’t it? In fact, they're not the same.
B2B Marketing KPIs vs. B2B Marketing Metrics
It's important to know the difference between marketing KPIs and metrics every time you set marketing goals. There are some people who use them interchangeably, but this is a little misleading.
Similar to sales and marketing, design and development, or forks and spoons, KPIs and metrics work together, but have very different responsibilities.
In KPIs, the big picture is taken into account. The goals are the same across departments and relate directly to your business's bigger long-term goals.
As with business goals, metrics focus on specific tactics and initiatives used to accomplish them, which vary by department.
Using our travel example again, your KPI could be visiting all of Italy in one month. In order to accomplish that, your metrics would be tracking individual cities or regions you need to visit.
Imagine you want to increase your number of new customers by 25% this year. That’s your KPI.
To generate new leads, you would measure the click-through rate of your social media ads or the open rate of your email campaigns.
Why do we even need to track any of these things?
Why track B2B marketing KPIs and metrics?
B2B marketing KPIs tell you what your team is trying to accomplish and where everything should lead. You are guided by them.
They guide your strategy because you can ask, “Is this going to help us reach our goal?”
Marketing metrics go even further. These measurements can help you:
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Keep track of your progress
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Analyze customer/audience feedback
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Evaluate the effectiveness of your work/creative
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Make future campaigns more effective
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Demonstrate return on investment (ROI)
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Incentivize teams
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Improve your business decisions
B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics to Track
Having learned why B2B marketing KPIs and metrics are important, which ones should you focus on?
Based on some of the most popular marketing initiatives, here are 24 of the most important ones for your organization.
Website Performance KPIs and Metrics
Among HubSpot's 2024 State of Marketing report findings, company websites/blogs/SEO drove the biggest ROI for marketers in the past year.
In many cases, your website is the center of all your content marketing efforts, as well as your sales efforts. Monitoring your website's KPIs and metrics allows you to ensure it's performing at its best.
1. Website Traffic: This is the volume of users visiting a website
Modern businesses rely heavily on their company website. People come to learn more about what you do and often initiate sales conversations even if they aren't making actual purchases.
You can gauge interest and potential sales activity by understanding traffic. Metrics you can track include:
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Unique Visits: The number of unique individuals who visit one or more web pages.
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Page Views: Total number of web pages viewed, including individually refreshed pages.
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Traffic Source: The source of your website visitors (email, social media, search engines).
How to calculate and track it? A number of tools are available to help you track your website traffic. For businesses using HubSpot tools, combining HubSpot Analytics and Google Analytics is most effective.
In HubSpot, you can easily view your page views and sessions filtered by time frame or source.
2. Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of website visitors that click on one page and leave
Your bounce rate can help you gauge whether your website is achieving your goals. A low bounce rate may indicate that people are engaged and interested in your website.
They’re staying and clicking around.
The high number may indicate that either your website is not what someone is looking for or did not deliver what they were looking for, or they immediately found what they were looking for and left.
What is the best way to calculate and track it? Another KPI you can track in HubSpot is the number of unique visitors on each website page, landing page, and blog. Here’s how it can appear in the analytics of a blog article.
3. Conversions: How many visitors took your desired action on your website, like subscribing to your newsletter or making a purchase
The fuel for your marketing and sales funnel is leads and new contacts. If someone fills out a form on your website, they've shown an active interest in what you have to offer.
In order to put the rest of your marketing and nurturing activities into motion, you need to take this first step. It may be necessary to track several different things in order to convert people:
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Form Conversion Rate (or visit to form submission): This is the percentage of website visitors that submit a form. (Formula: Form conversion rate = (total form conversions / total visitors) x 100)
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Number of Form Submissions: This is how many times forms were submitted on your website.
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Number of New Contacts: How many new contacts has your website generated.
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Visit to New Contact: This is what percentage of visits to your website resulted in a new contact.
How to calculate and track it? The tool you use to host your forms or landing pages should calculate conversion rates automatically, but if not, you can calculate your own with this formula:
Conversion Rate = Total number of conversions /
Number of visitors (or submissions, clicks, etc.) x 100
Sales and Marketing Pipeline
Filling out a form on your website adds someone to your sales and marketing pipeline so that they can be nurtured toward making a purchase.
63% of B2B marketers track their marketing/sales funnels as KPIs and metrics, and with their direct correlation to revenue, they should.
4. Number of Leads (or Leads In): This is the total number of contacts generated by your campaigns that could buy from you
Similar to the number of new contacts, this tells you how many new people you need to nurture towards a purchase. Differentiating them is that these contacts have qualities that indicate they may become customers.
If you sell enterprise software, a college student could become a contact after downloading a report for a class project on your website, but they can't buy from you. However, they are a contact, not a lead.
What is the best way to calculate and track it? Once you know what makes someone a lead, you can use HubSpot Lead Scoring to identify them.
HubSpot allows you to automatically segment these leads and keep track of their size by creating an active list.
5. Cost Per Lead (CPL): This is the total number of dollars it takes to acquire a potential customer.
According to HubSpot's Jay Fuchs, "[CPL] can be used to measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns, such as Google ads, email marketing, or social media, as well as to determine whether your marketing spend is being maximized as a whole."
Basically, you can use this information to determine the cost-effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Lead generation campaigns are not worth your time if they cost more than they generate.
How to calculate and track it? Calculate this yourself or use a spreadsheet. Here is the formula:
6. Close Rate (or Lead to Closing Rate): This is the percentage of leads that eventually become customers
You can gauge the quality of the leads you're bringing in and the effectiveness of your sales process by your close rate.
Things are going well if your close rate is high. If not, you may need to re-evaluate your lead criteria or sales behavior.
How to calculate and track it? Calculate this KPI on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:
Close Rate =
(number of leads that closed as sales / total number of leads) x 100
7. Number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads): The number of leads engaged with your company’s marketing and have the potential to become a more serious prospect
A marketing team's MQLs help them understand how many leads they're bringing in and if they're quality leads.
How to calculate and track it? To segment these leads and keep an eye on their size, you can use a combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows. Find out more about MQLs.
8. Number of SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads): Number of prospective customers ready to talk to someone on your sales team
When SQLs express enough interest in your product or service, they are ready to move into the sales process. You can track this number to know how many people your sales team is currently working with.
In addition, it provides valuable information about which marketing initiatives are most effective in generating sales.
How to calculate and track it? A combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows can be used to automatically segment these SQLs and keep track of their size. Find out more about SQLs.
We recommend using HubSpot's Dashboard & Reporting software if your marketing and website are hosted by HubSpot.
9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The amount it takes to convert a potential lead into a customer
Like CPL, CAC tells you how cost-efficient your marketing and sales processes are. You don’t want to be spending more on getting customers than you are making from them.
How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:
CAC = marketing spend/number of new customers resulting from campaign
10. Customer lifetime value (CLV): Total amount of revenue a business can expect from a single customer
If you know how much you will make from a customer, you can determine how much you can spend trying to close them. Therefore, this is a useful metric to compare to CAC. It's likely that you're spending too much money acquiring customers if your CAC is higher than your LTV.
In terms of financial value, the higher the CLV, the more valuable the customer.
How to calculate and track it? Use the following formula to calculate this KPI on your own or through a spreadsheet:
Customer lifetime value =
average transaction size x number of transactions x retention period
11. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): This is the amount of revenue a business receives from a customer each month, such as for a subscription-based service or consulting retainer
This is how much money you are “guaranteed” to have each month from your customers. It allows you to plan budgets and make other financial predictions.
How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:
Monthly recurring revenue =
average revenue per customer x total number of customers
12. Return on Investment (ROI): the amount you gain from your marketing efforts compared to their cost
You never want to spend more than you make. Like CPL and CAC, calculating and tracking your marketing ROI can help you determine how you are performing in that regard.
How to calculate and track it? You can calculate your ROI using this formula:
ROI =
(Total Revenue - Total Investment) / Total Investment
Social Media KPIs and Metrics
According to HubSpot's research, social media ties with a company’s website or blog as the top ROI-driving channel for marketers in the past 12 months. So, it’s important to know how you’re performing there.
Organic social media is usually best suited to boosting brand awareness and engaging your audience, while paid social media can generate big results in sales and more.
13. Social media reach (following): Total number of followers across social media or per platform
Your social media followers "opt in" to stay in touch with your business and hear more about what you have to offer.
You can use this number to estimate your initial social media reach before engagement and hashtags are taken into account.
How to calculate and track it? Many social media tools, such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial, allow you to monitor your following across multiple platforms. Facebook, Instagram, X, and your LinkedIn Company page will also be tracked by HubSpot.
To view yours, navigate to “Marketing,” “Social,” then “Analyze.”
14. Social media engagement: This measures how many interactions your posts on social media are getting
Engaging your audience on social media is one of the biggest indicators that your content is connecting with them. Social media algorithms often take engagement into account as well.
Posts with more engagement are more likely to be shared to exploration and discovery feeds.
Some common social media engagement metrics include:
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Likes
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Comments
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Shares or Retweets
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Messages
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Tags or Mentions
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Replies
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Impressions or views
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Plays
How to calculate and track it? Almost all social media management tools, including HubSpot, allow you to monitor your followings across multiple platforms.
In HubSpot, you can see clicks, shares, impressions, and interactions (likes, comments, and reactions) of both HubSpot-published posts and those on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn Company pages.
How to Report Your B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics
It is useless to collect data without meaning.
You need a plan for analyzing and reporting findings to your team and other stakeholders once you've identified and tracked all your metrics.
"Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and achieve organization-wide goals," explains Allie Konchar, Partner and Head of Client Operations at Omniscient.
It's important to know how to create effective marketing reports to inform future marketing decisions and strategies.
To help you get started, we've also created a collection of monthly marketing report templates. These will help you:
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Track the monthly growth of your visits, leads, and customers.
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Measure your website's visit-to-lead conversion rate.
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Accurately track which channels are performing best.
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Plug your metrics into a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck to present to your boss.
Tracking your way to success with KPIs
That was a lot, we know. There are likely even more B2B marketing KPIs your team will need to track to truly understand its performance.
Once you've got the right tools and templates in place, it's much easier to scale and adjust your efforts. To track your way to marketing success, use this list and the tips shared.