Convincing Your Boss of the Effectiveness of Inbound Marketing

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As an inbound marketer, you have so many metrics and data sources to check.

SEO rankings, backlinks, downloads, reach / impressions, Facebook followers, engagement… the list is endless.

But how do you separate the vanity metrics from the ones that really matter?

More importantly, how do you convince your boss that all your marketing activity is generating results for the company?

These conversations are critical; from justifying additional marketing budgets for the next year, additional headcount or pushing an initiative across to the senior management.

This is important especially when trust between CEOs and CMOs is at an all time low. In Fournaise Group’s interviews of more than 1200 enterprise-level and SMB CEOs in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, 80% of CEOs don’t trust the work done by marketers.

First, let’s see what are the typical marketing goals your boss will care about. The (main) job of the marketing department is to “generate more customer demand for their products or services in a business quantifiable and business-measurable way”. (Source)

A CEO or CFO will ask questions like these:

• How much faster are we growing now versus last quarter or last year?
• How much revenue or profit is forecast for the next quarter?

Its not about the number of likes, followers or pageviews. It’s about generating qualified leads that Sales can close effectively that impacts the company’s revenue or profits.

Now that you know the CEO’s primary concerns, how do you use inbound marketing data to answer his or her questions? We outline some tips to answer the 3 main questions posed by your boss.

#1: Are Our Profits and Revenues Going Up?

Look at the month on month or quarter on quarter growth in organic website traffic and leads generated. Organic traffic refers to traffic independent of paid advertising or outbound email messages.

From there, track how much web traffic converts into leads and whether they convert into customers. Positive data here will support marketing’s case that all that content marketing, social outreach and link-building have impact on the bottom-line.

#2: Which Marketing Channels Should We Invest More / Less In?

Here you can track which sources or content assets are driving the most traffic. Don’t forget to compare your results either with your previous quarter’s benchmarks as a baseline. If this is the first time you’re measuring your marketing efforts, you can also use industry benchmarks as a starting point.

Consider breaking down this information by source (individual social media channels, paid advertising, organic search, referral traffic, etc.). If you have published multiple content assets, it’s also worthwhile to look at what format (eBook, whitepaper, customer videos, SlideShare) drives the most conversions versus topics (Is topic X more popular than topic Y?)

#3: How Much Does Inbound Marketing Contribute To Our Customer Pipeline?

Monitor trends of your inbound lead generation efforts and look at how inbound marketing will contribute to your company’s revenue pipeline. Remember that conversions not only include the ultimate conversion to become a customer, but also moving from each lead stage to another.

Some questions you can consider asking here:

• How many new prospects were created last month?
• How many MQLs were rejected / passed on last month?
• How many active prospects do I have in my pipeline?
• In each lead stage. are my conversion rates going up or down?
• Do certain types of leads move faster through the pipeline?

Remember your boss doesn’t care about the number of raw prospects or just about the leads generated. They care about the bottom line; revenue or profits. Monitor the effectiveness of your lead pipeline and use the data to forecast performance for the next quarter.

Using metrics effectively to present information succinctly and negotiate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is a challenging effort and you should always be looking to see where your marketing campaigns can be doing better.