Here’s a radical thought… Instead of measuring B2B marketers on MQL’s, why not measure based on total impressions? In the long sales cycle, B2B game… simply measuring success by the number of demo's/eBook's downloaded can miss a large chunk of what the B2B marketer does. In my mind, a B2B marketer is successful is the majority of prospects say this when a sales person reaches out: 👉 “Yes, I’ve heard of you guys” 👈 As any sales person will tell you, it’s a great way to start a sales conversation 👻 #marketing
Nice advise!
I'd love this, but it's hard to show ROI and prove that those positive conversations are the result of marketing's efforts. I think if a company believes in what the marketing team is doing, this would be magic, but most marketers need to continually prove their value.
TQI = total qualified impressions , I like it Tom.
I don't think there should be a single metric to focus on. As marketers, we must provide TRUE value to our audience. So for me, engagement rates are key but we should always look at the bigger picture. Impressions are a great metric to show the growth of your audience but a bit of a vanity metric. As John McTigue mentioned, it's the quality of those impressions that we need to consider and understand. This is where a well thought out content strategy, mapped to a customer journey comes in, in my view. If you can track those engagements, time spent consuming content, and the types of content, this will allow sales and marketing to work together to help those customers meet their goals at various stages of their journey. Measuring on MQL's is definitely short-sighted and an old way to do things and... only one chapter of the story. Hearing those great words of 'Yes i've heard of you guys' is a nice boost though.
Interesting thought, but there’s one problem. If you focus on volume, i.e. impressions, you may be reaching the wrong audience. Yes, there’s word-of-mouth to consider, but you may be attracting lots of leads who will never become customers and essentially bog down your sales team in trying to find qualified buyers. Wouldn’t it be better to bring in a smaller, more ready-to-buy group?
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