B2B Marketing KPIs vs. Metrics: 24+ Every Business Should Be Tracking
By rsukhraj@hubspot.com (Ramona Sukhraj)
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Over the last decade, I’ve helped set and track marketing goals for B2B businesses of all kinds — And I’ve come to think of them more as destinations.
They’re points on the map your team wants to reach. And B2B marketing KPIs (key performance indicators)? Well, they’re how you measure how far you’ve gone and just how far you have left.
You can measure trips in miles, hours, or even how many Spotify playlists you’ve gone through. Similarly, there are dozens of KPIs to measure progress toward our marketing goals — but don’t worry; there’s no need to guess and check.
Regardless of industry or audience, there are some KPIs everyone should be tracking, and I’ve compiled them for you here. We’ll define them, why they’re important, and how to track them effectively.
Table of Contents
What are B2B marketing KPIs?
As HubSpot contributor Rebecca Riserbato explains, a key performance indicator (KPI) “measures how your company is performing regarding certain long-term goals or objectives.”
That means B2B marketing KPIs are data points marketers use to monitor and measure the progress of their business-to-business (B2B) marketing initiatives (e.g., website campaigns or email marketing).
It kind of sounds like a metric, doesn’t it? But — plot twist — they’re not the same.
B2B Marketing KPIs vs. B2B Marketing Metrics
Every time I’ve set marketing goals, I’ve needed a refresher on the difference between marketing KPIs and metrics. Many people even use them interchangeably, but this is a little misguided.
KPIs and metrics are similar and work together but have very different responsibilities — like sales and marketing, design and development, or forks and spoons.
KPIs are focused on the big picture. They relate directly to your business’s larger long-term goals and are the same across departments.
Metrics are related to business goals, too, but they zero in on specific tactics and initiatives used to accomplish them and tend to change by department.
To use our travel example again, your KPI could be visiting all of Italy in a month. However, your metrics would be tracking individual cities or regions you need to visit to accomplish that.
Thinking of business: say you want to increase your number of new customers by 25% this year. That’s your KPI.
Your marketing metrics would be the click-through rate of the social media ads you run to try to generate new leads or the open rate of the email campaigns you run.
But why do we even need to track any of these things?
Why track B2B marketing KPIs and metrics?
Simply put, B2B marketing KPIs tell you what your team is working …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
