Are you a leader tasked with transforming your company’s marketing? That can be a challenging road. But imagine, if you will, a world where you can demonstrate the ROI of every initiative and every dollar spent. Where your team presents a scorecard to leadership every month that shows insights and results. And where lessons learned one month can be applied to make performance better the next. 

Sounds like a marketer’s dream, right? Well, you can make it a reality. 

Whether you’re new to the role or have been given the mandate to achieve change, you’ve got a big job ahead of you. Marketing transformation involves people, processes and technology, and you need a lot of resources (ideally a combination of in-house and external) and significant know-how to make it happen. But it is possible. 

Things are changing in B2B marketing

The old-school marketing tactics that were every B2B company’s go-to just aren’t cutting it anymore. It’s no surprise that the heavy dependence on sales calls and tradeshows is slowly disappearing. To ensure growth and success, your marketing tactics have to be measurable ‒ otherwise, how can you tell if they’re effective or not? 

Getting to a place where you can measure everything you do takes a commitment to transforming your marketing into a function that’s high-performing, data-driven and results-focused. 

Is this where you are with your marketing right now? 

• Your marketing team is made of communications or events professionals who have no idea how to measure the effectiveness of their work. 
• You don’t have a measurement system in place. 
• There’s no focus on figuring out what’s working and what isn’t. 
• There’s no long-term plan: the team functions in a reactive state, working on whatever is important that week/month rather than working towards a larger, pre-defined goal. 

Sound like your company? Rest assured, you’re not alone. Here’s how you can transform your marketing function in 4 steps. 

1. Start with a vision. Determine what your transformation will look like: what does it mean, what will it entail, and what do you want it to achieve? To be more data-driven and outcome-oriented in your marketing, planning has to start with the end goal in mind. Kick things off by deciding on a set of specific business goals, articulated in plain English so everyone can understand them. 
2. Decide on 3-5 key metrics to track. Based on the goals you initially set out, choose metrics that show whether or not you’re reaching those goals. Whether it’s number of sales, new leads or new contacts, decide from the outset what numbers matter most, and which ones you want to track and grow. 
3. Develop key indicators. These are the numbers that show you’re heading in the right direction, and include things like site traffic, social media followers, email subscribers, etc. 
4. Create a dashboard. Bring all your metrics and indicators into one place so it’s easy for everyone to see and understand the numbers. Put all the tech pieces in place to ensure you can populate those numbers from the outset with CRM reports, campaign tags, conversion tracking, etc. Every marketing activity you do should contribute to these numbers...no passengers. Watch your dashboard like a hawk, and be prepared to investigate deeper and change course when needed. 

You don’t have to do it alone. 

Bringing in an external partner can give you the knowledge and resources you need, without having to hire an in-house team and go through a huge learning curve. Mezzanine has deep knowledge of data-driven B2B marketing. Turning your marketing function into a growth engine is what we do best ‒ our experts embed themselves in your organization, ensure the people, processes, and technology you need are in place, all in as little as a year. After that, you’ll be equipped to drive the engine yourselves, and use data and digital capabilities to dramatically grow your business. 

Contact us today to see how we can help you with measurable marketing ‒ and the sustained growth you’re looking for. 

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