Attribution modeling – the move to data-driven conversions

by Deena Hefford, on 21/06/2023

With artificial intelligence (AI) becoming a prominent part of digital marketing, the realm of attribution modeling has been revolutionised with advanced algorithms and predictive models that can significantly enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of attribution strategies. In this blog, we’ll explore how AI-driven attribution can help unlock new insights for businesses to optimise their marketing efforts and drive meaningful results.

What is attribution modeling?

Attribution modeling is a set of rules that determines how credit is given to marketing channels, providing deeper insights into how impactful each touchpoint on the customer’s journey is in driving conversions.

This enables marketers to take a holistic view of their marketing efforts, understand how customers move through the conversion path, identify the influence of each channel to maximise ROI, and optimise strategy to deliver tailored campaigns and content specific to each persona.

Attribution modeling types

Over time, multiple attribution models have been developed to address the complex nature of the sophisticated customer journeys audiences take nowadays. There is no one-size-fits-all model and what you choose to use depends on the product, length of the sales cycle, and what decisions businesses need to make. Different reporting tools may also use different methodologies for attribution (e.g. Pardot’s default is First click whilst Facebook Ads’ default is Last click).

This month, Google will be phasing out First click, Linear, Time decay, and Position-based attributions for Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads, leaving marketers with two attribution model options: Last touch (Last click) and Google’s recommended model – Data-driven. But what do these mean?

#1 Last Touch / Last Click Attribution

This once-popular method assigns 100% credit to the final touchpoint that the customer interacted with before converting, providing insights on the marketing channel that directly generates a conversion. For example, if a new customer clicks on a PPC ad, then later visits the website through a social post, then receives a marketing email and registers for your event from the email, 100% of the credit is assigned to email, even though PPC and social media was an important step in their customer journey.

Although this method is straightforward to implement and is recommended for shorter sales cycles, it holds some limitations of being a single-touch approach, meaning credit is not given to any other channel – no matter how impactful they might have been to the conversion. This fragments the customer journey and ignores the importance of the initial awareness and consideration stages of a conversion path.

As marketers aim to gather more data throughout the conversion funnel to inform marketing decisions, last touch will likely be replaced by more advanced models that utilise AI and machine learning to analyse and predict user behaviour, including data-driven attribution.

#2 Data-driven Attribution

Data-driven attribution, Google Analytics 4’s default attribution model, is a new, dynamic approach that uses algorithms to distribute credit for conversions based on each channel’s click interaction, taking into account all touchpoints throughout the customer journey. It considers multiple data points, from time between interactions, to ad format and more, whilst removing our own personal biases to calculate and calibrate the incremental value of each marketing channel. In our example (where a new customer clicks on a PPC ad, then later visits the website through a social post, then receives a marketing email and registers for your event from the email), data-driven attribution means a specific proportion of the credit is assigned to each marketing channel dependent on the influence that it likely had in the resulting conversion – so it could be that some of the conversion is attributed to email, some to social and some to PPC.

This method provides a holistic view of the whole marketing campaign, going beyond one single interaction and surfacing insights on the impacts of marketing channels on earlier stages of the conversion funnel. By evaluating both the converting and non-converting paths (comparing what happened and what could have happened), data-driven attribution enables insights into how much each marketing channel contributes to generating a conversion. As a result, marketers are also enabled to allocate marketing budgets and make data-driven decisions more effectively with a deeper understanding of customer behaviour.

Difference in results between Last click vs. Data-driven attribution on GA4 Conversion report

However, like any other attribution model, data-driven also has certain considerations that marketers need to be aware of. Since data-driven attribution fully relies on the algorithms for credit assignment, it is susceptible to:

#1 – Learning period and data requirements:

Data-driven attribution requires a sufficient amount of conversion data to accurately assign credit, as it needs to learn from multiple different scenarios and combinations of touchpoints to calibrate its values. With Universal Analytics sunsetting deadline coming, businesses who use Google Analytics for reporting need to make the switch quickly to gather enough data to feed into the algorithms, enabling them to provide accurate results early on (Google recommends at least 28 days of historical data for best results). Whilst the threshold is still unclear, GA4 may default the results in its reports back to last touch/click if there is not enough data.

#2 – Algorithmic biases:

Like any data-driven approach, the data-driven attribution model may have algorithmic biases from biased training data or limitations in the underlying algorithms. It is essential for businesses to set up GA4 accurately from the start to ensure traffic tracked is accurate and reflective of the true paths customers take towards a conversion, minimising any potential biases that may affect the accuracy or fairness of the attribution results.

If you don’t already have GA4 implemented, or GA4 has been put in place without consideration of your business goals and marketing objectives, you need to take action now. Our web analytics experts are here to make sure you don’t put a foot wrong in your GA4 journey! Get in touch today.

#3 – Lack of visibility:

As data-driven attribution is fully reliant on Google’s infrastructure and algorithms working in the background, there is no visibility of how exactly credits are being assigned.

Implications for businesses

As the customer journey becomes more complex and analytics continues to be developed, data-driven attribution and its algorithms will also be improved upon. Regular monitoring and evaluation of the attribution model’s outputs are necessary to identify and address any algorithmic biases or limitations. Businesses should also ensure they have access to comprehensive and reliable data that covers all touchpoints and channels in the customer journey to facilitate accurate algorithm learning.

The implementation of data-driven attribution will also result in more complex reporting, with Google introducing additional metrics to enable deeper analysis. Marketers need to stay on top of these data points, as well as cross-reference them with additional metrics across other tools and platforms to uncover valuable insights on high-performing marketing channels to inform overall marketing strategy.

Embracing data-driven attribution and leveraging AI technologies enables businesses to gain a competitive edge in the evolving digital landscape. With data-driven conversions, businesses can extract actionable insights from vast amounts of traffic data, optimise marketing strategies, and make data-driven decisions. This empowers businesses to stay agile, capitalise on market opportunities, and deliver targeted and personalised experiences to their audience, ultimately driving growth and success.

Do you need help putting GA4 in place or optimising it to capture the data you need to run your business well?

MPG’s web analytics experts are trained and experienced in GA4 set up and optimisation, so we’re a safe pair of hands to help you make this critical transition well.

Get in touch with Team MPG

“MPG developed some valuable analytics dashboards that give us constant visibility of how our website and other marketing channels are performing. This means our senior stakeholders can easily understand how various marketing initiatives are performing, and then make good decisions to get the most out of our marketing investments. We recommend working with MPG’s analytics and marketing experts!”

Jenny Fazakerley, Head of FT Board Director Programme UK, Financial Time

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Questions B2B media/events business leaders should be asking about AI to win in 2024

by Anna Stone, on 23/05/2023

The hype around AI is ramping up, and most leaders and senior marketers in B2B media/events companies are still trying to work out how to react.

There is a palpable fear in some businesses that competitors and future disruptors will ‘eat the lunch’ of those who don’t adapt quickly, as well as great excitement in those who see embracing emerging tech fast as a means of gaining a competitive advantage.

Some of the most progressive businesses are seriously considering how they should disrupt themselves before someone else does.

From MPG’s perspective, we see the following as some of the most important questions B2B media/events businesses and those responsible for their marketing should be asking themselves:

  • What tools should our team start using straight away to increase efficiency and productivity?
  • How should AI tools be added to our existing tech stack to enhance what we already have in place?
  • Do the tools in our current tech stack offer AI functionality we’re not yet using? And for all tools in our tech stack, what is their roadmap to introduce more useful AI?
  • How should we manage the risk around ‘betting on’ AI tools? How do we mitigate this risk?
  • How can we get all our staff on board the AI journey, especially the most skeptical, and those who fear they will be replaced with AI?
  • How fast do we need to move to adopt AI? How much time do we have to figure out our AI strategy? How quickly will today’s best AI tools be replaced by the next generation of best AI tools?
  • How much is ‘getting AI’ going to cost us? How do we build an investment plan to pay for this, and build a strong business case for each investment to gain board approval?

And probably the most important question of all based on personal interest of senior executives, and how they can put themselves in a strong position to answer all the questions above:

  • Where do I find the most relevant information about what AI means for me and my business?
  • And how can I stay plugged into this valuable source of relevant information to help me stay up to date with AI developments?

It’s the last two questions that B2B media/events business leaders should be considering more laterally…

Your B2B media/events brand puts you in a great position to be the conduit of AI learning and information sharing for your community. You have probably already published reports and articles on AI for your audience, sold AI focused webinars to your clients, and incorporated AI into your event programmes.

But…have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’.

AI will certainly help enhance the in-person event experience, and smart event organisers are already using AI to engage and serve their event audiences more efficiently and ‘personally’, i.e. based on what each audience member finds most valuable – en masse (e.g. matchmaking tools). AI will also deliver even more valuable marketing solutions for sponsors and exhibitors as data and analytics can be used to deliver a better and more visible ROI for clients’ marketing spend.

But, as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events.

If anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve. This will be especially important for brands that have built membership offerings where events are a key part of a membership package. As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT reduce the need for search engines, businesses that rely on search traffic to drive visitors to content-heavy sites may find digital engagement from web traffic falling off a cliff. Engagement with events will probably need to fill the gap.

Therefore, information brands with ‘flagship’ annual events they rely on to engage and serve their community members should recognise that the accelerated adoption of AI will make it more important than ever for their flagship events to take, and hold, a market leading position.

A strong, content-led, annual flagship event will always successfully drive community engagement, membership growth and overall revenue – as long as the marketing of the event is planned and executed well.

As we approach the halfway point of 2023, here are the two things event organisers should be putting in place now (if they have not done so already) to ensure their flagship events in 2024 will hold or take the market leading spot:

#1 A strong event product development strategy and team:

Your subject matter experts (i.e. editors, analysts, etc.) and event programming experts (i.e. conference producers) should already be doing the work needed to create a valuable programme for your 2024 flagship event.

The earlier a strong product is created (with strong speakers confirmed), the better chance you have of capturing the 2024 budget your customers will be putting towards sponsoring, exhibiting or attending events.

#2 A strong go-to-market strategy and marcomms plan:

  • Analyse your target market

    • Define your total addressable market, as well as the size and profile of key segments. Consider both your event audience buying tickets, as well as vendors who will buy your exhibition stands and sponsorships – both markets need to be defined and well understood.
    • Evaluate your current database in terms of data contained and how it is structured in relation to the size and shape of your overall target market and key market segments. Will your database give you the targeted reach you require to attract all the visitors/delegates and exhibitors/sponsors you need for commercial success and a market leading position?
    • Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you audit, structure, grow and maintain your database to create business value and ensure your database gives you a competitive advantage.
  • Define your value proposition i.e. unique selling points (USPs) and benefits. How will your event be differentiated from competitors in a way that makes customers choose yours?
  • Determine what key messages will resonate with different market segments. What tone, words and phrases need to be used in all your marcomms to attract, engage and convert customers so they not only register for your event, but also turn up on the day?
    Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you develop more relevant, compelling and engaging messages than your competitors.
  • Martech, data and analytics: evaluate your martech, salestech, database and analytics tools in terms of how well you can reach your target market in a scalable way.
    • Where are the gaps in your data?
    • Which tools need to be better set up and optimised to work as they need to?
    • What integrations are needed for real-time, efficient data flow and compliance are missing?
    • What tools are missing in your tech stack?

If your data, tech and analytics tools are not set up in the right way, you won’t have an efficient and scalable business so that your flagship event can get and keep the ‘top spot’.

It is also worth bearing in mind that to use marketing automation and other AI tools you need a good tech and data setup.

Get in touch to ask for case studies on how Team MPG have helped many B2B media/events businesses improve their martech and data to enable scalable growth (MPG are official partners to HubSpot, Marketo and various other leading martech platforms)

  • Create a better event marcomms plan than your competitors…
    The detail on how to do this will be in our next blog post! Sign up here to get an email notification every time MPG publishes a new Insights piece like this on.

 

Team MPG can help you accelerate the  growth of your B2B events

AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing database, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Get in touch with Team MPG today to see how we can help you build a resilient marketing function that is well set up for future success.

“MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!”

Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI – Alternative Insight

Take a look at this short video by MPG’s own Dominic Bird at a recent Gleanin event that explains how AI is being used to gather insights, understand customer behaviour, and personalize marketing strategies. Watch the full video here.

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Unleashing the power of AI in B2B event marketing – a practical guide

by Adelia Gabriel Le, on 11/05/2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising digital marketing by providing insights, automating processes, and personalising customer experiences, leading to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and better ROI.

  • Analysing customer data: AI algorithms can analyse large amounts of customer data, including their preferences, behaviour, and interaction history, to identify patterns and insights. These insights can help marketers understand their customers’ needs and preferences better and develop targeted strategies to engage with them more effectively.
  • Automating customer interactions: AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive tools can automate customer interactions through various channels, such as social media, email, or messaging apps. These tools can handle basic queries, provide personalised recommendations, and offer real-time assistance, freeing your marketers to focus on more strategic or critical tasks that only humans can do.
  • Personalising customer experiences: AI can help marketers personalise customer experiences by using customer data to offer relevant product recommendations, content, and promotions, creating a more personalised and engaging experience.

But as AI becomes more accessible, many B2B media and events marketing leaders are still unsure about how to utilise the power of AI in a practical way. Below are just some examples of how AI can be leveraged for high-performance marketing.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising:

  • AI can optimise ad campaigns by analysing user behaviour, search queries, and other relevant data to target ideal consumers with personalised ads.
  • AI can also automate bidding strategies, reducing the workload for advertisers and ensuring that ads get the most clicks and conversions.
  • AI-powered tools can also use natural language processing and machine learning to generate ad copy for PPC ads that is more likely to be clicked on, taking into account factors like audience demographics and campaign objectives.
  • AI can be used to generate long-tail keywords that are more likely to convert. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords, which means that they are more likely to result in clicks and conversions.

Email Marketing:

  • AI can analyse audience behaviour and preferences, which means you can create personalised email content that resonates with your audience and increases click-through rates.
  • AI copy tools can be used to help marketers create impactful subject line ideas that feel more personal and are likely to increase open rates.
  • AI newsletter automation tools can be used to create personalised newsletters with a custom curation of articles and adverts that are aggregated from multiple sources which will help you grow your relationships with your audience while executing mass personalisation.
  • AI can also be used for generating html code for emails, which can save marketers time and effort, and it can help to ensure that their emails are always professional and effective.

Social Media Marketing:

  • AI can recognise different social media platforms, enabling marketers to create channel-specific draft posts. These will be highly generalised though as AI will never fully understand your target audience in the meaningful way your marketers do, so you’ll still need some human intervention for increasing engagement and growth.
  • AI can also analyse social media conversations, providing insights into customer sentiment and engagement rates, enabling marketers to refine their campaigns and improve their social media presence.

Content Marketing:

  • AI can be used to repurpose existing content into new and engaging formats. This can help you to extend the reach of your content and to reach a wider audience. For example, you could use AI to create infographics, video scripts, or use transcription tools to transcribe video and webinar content making it much easier for marketers to repurpose the content for social posts, blogs etc.
  • AI can be used to track the performance of your content and to identify what is resonating with your target audience. This information can then be used to improve your future content marketing efforts so you can create more of that content to keep them engaged. It can also be used to personalise content for each individual user for example, to recommend articles to users based on their past reading history.
  • AI can be used to generate high-quality, relevant copy on a consistent basis. AI can also be used for proofing copy by placing your already written copy into the tool, it can be quickly scanned for errors, repetitive words and phrases and alternative copy can be recommended. It is important to remember however that AI is just a tool and cannot replace the human touch. A human copywriter will still need to review the AI-generated copy to ensure that it is on-brand and resonates with the target audience.

Websites:

  • AI chatbots can improve customer engagement and satisfaction by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and helping customers navigate your website’s content or products.
  • AI can analyse your audience’s web behaviour (pages viewed, content searches, forms completed) and purchase history to create personalised product, content and promotion recommendations.
  • AI can also help optimise website content and structure for search engines, by analysing keywords and other factors affecting SEO and make recommendations on how to improve rankings and visibility.

Marketing and sales automation:

  • AI can be used to automate tasks such as qualifying leads, and scheduling appointments. This can free up time for your salespeople to focus on more strategic and commercial tasks, such as building relationships with customers and closing deals.
  • AI can be used to personalise the sales and marketing process. For example, AI can be used to send personalised emails to leads or to create personalised landing pages. This can help to improve the customer experience and to increase conversion rates.
  • AI can be used to track and analyse data. This data can be used to identify trends, improve targeting, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to improve future marketing efforts.

AI is evolving fast, with new tools being released daily which can make it difficult for marketers to stay up to date with the latest technologies and their practical applications. We recommend appointing a dedicated AI Champion (or even multiple champions), who can help your business stay on top of the latest tech, analysing the practical implications for your business and feeding this intelligence back into the team.

  • Copy and text solutions – for creating copy for ads, emails, blog frameworks, keyword generation etc:
  • Audio to text solutions – many video conferencing tools now have this as native functionality but if you do need additional tools for generating transcripts of webinars or podcast content for easy repurposing you could try:
  • Text to image solutions – e.g. for generating images to be used in blogs, social media, ad graphics etc.
  • Other solutions:
    • rasa.io – for personalised email newsletters with curated content
    • AdCreative.ai – for generating ad and social media creatives including images and AI generated copy

But remember, while AI has the power to revolutionise your marketing and your business, if you don’t have a clear marketing strategy that is aligned with your business objectives, a strong value proposition, a well-maintained and growing database, an integrated sales and marketing tech stack and a website that is well-optimised for lead generation and conversions, then you’re unlikely to realise the true benefits of AI.

 

Team MPG can help you develop a marketing strategy inline with your event and business growth strategy and then deliver best-in-class marketing execution.

Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your revenues faster.

 

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MPG Newsletter | Spring 2023

by Lucy Peppercorn, on 25/04/2023

Spring has finally sprung! And just as nature is experiencing a season of renewal and growth, we reflect on how B2B media and events businesses are taking advantage of new opportunities and accelerating growth with a focus on commercial revenues.

Commercial marketing is a vital component of any B2B media and events business looking to expand its reach and acquire new clients. With the right strategies in place, commercial marketing can lead to significant growth and flourishing revenues for businesses of all sizes.

Consider the following questions when contemplating how to invest in this area:

  • Is there a consistent flow of well-qualified, warm leads to support your sales team adequately?
  • Do you possess the necessary marketing skills and resources for effective commercial marketing?
  • Are your commercial marketing and sales functions seamlessly integrated with appropriate systems and processes?
  • Are your sales pipelines optimised with lead nurturing to boost conversion rates and sales?
  • How much visibility do you have regarding marketing and sales performance, including lead generation, lead conversations, average order value, and length of the sales cycle?

In this newsletter, we will explore how integrated marketing and sales, a good martech stack, paid media, web analytics (including GA4), and email marketing can help businesses maximise their potential. By incorporating these elements and consistently refining strategies based on data and insights, businesses can generate leads, increase conversions, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

#1 Why is commercial marketing the ‘goldmine’ for spex revenue growth?

Spex clients will drive revenue growth in most events businesses in the next couple of years but you need to ensure the value proposition for sponsors and exhibitors is positioned and communicated well to positively influence both returning and new spex clients.

In this article, we share MPG’s recommended step-by-step process to achieve a well-integrated spex sales and commercial marketing setup.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#2 Integrated marketing and sales is essential for revenue growth

By aligning marketing and sales strategies, businesses can ensure that they are targeting the right audience with the right message, leading to increased conversions and revenue.

In this article, we provide you with a comprehensive guide that emphasises the importance of integrating marketing and sales in order to achieve sustainable growth for a business. The article highlights the three stages of the sales and marketing funnel, which are awareness, engagement, and conversion, and explains how marketing and sales can work together to optimise each stage. The article also discusses the challenges that businesses face when trying to integrate marketing and sales and provides practical solutions to overcome those challenges.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

GET MPG’S GUIDE TO SALES AND MARKETING INTEGRATION

#3 Investing in martech for sustainable growth

In today’s business landscape, investing in martech is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Cutting corners in your approach to martech can lead to technical debt that holds your business back.

A good martech stack is essential for effective commercial marketing. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, track customer interactions, and gain valuable insights into customer behaviour. This can help businesses optimise their marketing efforts and improve overall performance. User-friendly platforms, like HubSpot, allow businesses to have a single view of their customer and include marketing and sales automations without the need for internal technical teams. For larger businesses that have internal technical teams to support martech integrations and optimisations, enterprise-level platforms like Adobe/Marketo and Salesforce or MS Dynamics are potentially a good investment to enable integrated sales and marketing.

In this article, we discuss the top 5 investments business leaders should be making for long-term, sustainable growth.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#4 Why you should use paid media to acquire new sponsors

Paid media (PPC) can be an effective way to support commercial marketing efforts. By targeting specific audiences with strategic messaging, businesses can increase brand awareness and generate leads.

Paid Media, alongside other channels can help you:

  • Reach beyond your existing database to new, relevant leads; expanding your dataset and pushing more, brand-new sponsor opportunities into your sales pipeline.
  • Support other marketing efforts such as email and social media, pushing your conference to ‘top of mind’ and making it more likely sponsorship leads will be driven towards you.
  • Via automation, reach, nurture, and convert more relevant contacts faster to become qualified sponsorship leads. Paid media allows you to quickly increase the volume of relevant contacts you can engage with to convert to warm leads – without needing to add much more in terms of a marketer’s time (you just need to put more money in your campaigns once you’ve got them well-targeted).

In this article, we share with you the dos and don’ts of paid media for attracting, nurturing, and converting leads.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#5 Email marketing’s role in supporting the commercial marketing funnel

By nurturing leads with targeted messaging and personalised content, businesses can move potential customers closer to making a purchase. Email marketing can also be a great way to stay top-of-mind with current customers and encourage repeat business.

If your brand has both memberships and events, and you are sending lots of emails to the same data sets as the event product develops (e.g. new speakers are announced and new agenda sessions are added), you need sophisticated tools and a smart strategy that is well integrated with your membership product marketing.

In this recent article, we shared email marketing dos and don’ts for conference marketing. We focused on delegate acquisition, which is important to satisfy your sponsors, but these principles can also apply to your commercial marketing emails.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#6 Measuring the results of the joined-up marketing and sales effort

Success is driven by strong visibility of campaign effectiveness, and also core KPIs supported by commercial marketing activity – i.e. # of marketing qualified leads (MQLs); # of sales made from these MQLs; conversion rate from MQL to sale; revenue from MQLs; average order value of sales from MQLs; and ideally also the length of the sales cycle.

Web analytics, including GA4, is crucial for understanding how users interact with a website. By tracking user behavior, businesses can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, leading to more effective marketing strategies. GA4 in particular offers more advanced tracking options and can help businesses better understand the customer journey and conversion funnels.

The needs of sponsors are also becoming more sophisticated and sponsors are demanding much deeper audience engagement. Without a well-optimised website, and robust measurement in place, you won’t be able to provide your sponsors with critical information to support them in investing with you in the future.

In this article, we share with you the 3 things you won’t be able to do without having GA4 implemented.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Commercial marketing is the key to great riches! However, it’s essential to get it right. By implementing these strategies, you can unlock your business’s potential and drive revenue growth.

We hope that the insights we’ve shared in this newsletter will help you achieve success in your commercial marketing efforts!

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‘The Big Switch Off’ – Are you GA4 ready?

by Sharise Wilkinson, on 10/03/2023

There’s not much time left until Google sunsets Universal Analytics and will only process new data via  GA4 (Google Analytics 4). If you haven’t already implemented GA4, you need to do so as soon as possible, as there are 3 important things you won’t be able to do without it! 

#1 You’ll need GA4 to…track your website analytics

Put quite simply, if you do not switch to using GA4 before the 1st of July 2023, you will lose the ability to track your website analytics via Google Analytics. The current version, Universal Analytics (also known as GA3), will be ‘sunsetted’ in July 2023, meaning that you will no longer be able to collect data in any analytics properties using this version, so you will have no visibility of your website visitors and other stats. 

It will also not be possible to import any historical data from your existing UA properties to new GA4 ones – so if you have not done so already, set up GA4 asap to capture the data you need before the ‘big switch off’.

#2 You’ll need GA4 to…accurately track user engagement

One of the most crucial updates in GA4 is how user engagement will be tracked. Instead of cookie-based session tracking (as is with Universal Analytics), GA4 tracks ‘hits’ called events. This means that all user interactions on a website, such as clicks, form submissions, and video views, are recorded as events, allowing for a more detailed analysis of user behaviour.

Using these events, GA4 is then able to build a timeline of engagement for each of your website visitors, thus determining an accurate picture of each session. The engagement time is recorded from the first event to the last, and it’s much easier to determine the number of engaged sessions, against your overall website traffic.

Being able to more accurately understand how long your visitors are engaging with your website for, and what they’re engaging with, will give you the insights you need to optimise your on-site content.

#3 You’ll need GA4 to…use the latest AI in marketing

Another significant difference between GA4 event tracking and Universal Analytics is the use of machine learning algorithms. GA4 uses advanced algorithms to analyse user behaviour and predict their next move, allowing businesses to personalise the user experience and optimise marketing strategies. This feature is not available in Universal Analytics, which relies on basic tracking methods and reports – meaning if you haven’t already switched to GA4 – you’re missing out!

MPG can help you install GA4 on your website.

Contact us to start today!

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Essential steps to future-proof your marketing

by Team MPG, on 26/01/2023

Last month MPG’s founder, Helen Coetzee, hosted a roundtable discussion for the Renewd community on how to future-proof your marketing.

As economists and financial experts continue to debate the depth and length of a pending recession, the roundtable attendees discussed how to ‘be defensive but still invest well’, so that as things start improving, businesses are well set up to make the most of growth opportunities.

The resounding message was that sticking to the fundamentals and doing those well, and not being distracted by the latest ‘new and shiny’ marketing channels and tactics as a ‘silver bullet’, is going to be more important now than ever. Much of the conversation focussed on building and maintaining data, and optimising websites to support well-constructed customer journeys and good user experiences.

#1 Growing your database with 1st party data is essential for business success

Growing your database by continually adding more of the right future customers to your database – and therefore into your acquisition marketing and sales funnel – is critical for success.

Here we share with you the key takeaways from the database discussion:

  • Quality over quantity
    There’s a definite shift from the ‘more is better’ data approach. More businesses are focussing their data build efforts on being much more targeted in the data they are going after. While ABM is not a new concept, it’s still very underutilised and not as well understood as it should be in B2B marketing. Data build for ABM should be focussed on identifying the high-value accounts you want as customers, mapping out the key decision makers and influencers at those businesses and making sure they are on your database so you can market to and engage with them. You can find out more about how to implement ABM in your business in this MPG Insights resource.
  • How you segment your data matters
    Online behaviour is more important than capturing unnecessary demographic information. Having details on how engaged, how regularly they engage, and what content and formats your audience members are engaging with gives you a lot more valuable intelligence to be able to tailor your messages and content. With martech tools now available, we no longer have to make assumptions about what our customers and prospects are interested in based on job titles or past buying behaviour. Marketing automation also enables marketers to engage with their audience more responsively based on this online behaviour.
  • A hybrid approach to data collection is best
    1st party data collection should be augmented with 3rd party data research. A marrying of the two in a hybrid approach to create fuller potential customer profiles is particularly useful. On the flip side, where data is being built through 3rd party researchers, internal resources should still validate any classifications, or code the data themselves as these, often nuanced, classifications need a deep understanding of the customers. SIC codes are the enemy of marketing – they prevent you from using classifications that are meaningful and make sense to your audience and the product market fit.
  • Provide value in exchange for data
    Potential customers are more protective of their data and are far more reluctant to hand it over. In order to capture this precious commodity, you need to focus not just on what your customers can give you, but also on what you can give to them. By articulating the value the potential customer gets by providing their data, you dramatically increase your chances of them handing over this valuable info.
  • Growing databases requires robust processes
    Whether you have an internal data team or are outsourcing to good partners with the right compliance measures in place, a rigorous and consistent approach to validating, cleaning and maintaining your data is essential.

#2 Optimise customer journeys on your marketing website to acquire more customers and generate revenue

A well-optimised site attracts the right visitors, in required and sustainable volumes, and clearly communicates your value proposition.

Roundtable attendees were asked to rank how happy they are with their existing websites from 1 to 10 with 1 being the least happy. The responses ranged from 3 to 7 with the vast majority giving their websites a 6. Attendees’ key reasons for their ranking were customer experiences and user journeys. Key takeaways included:

  • Don’t make your website visitors work hard
    Many businesses are still falling into the trap of thinking of their website as just a series of pages rather than paying close attention to how visitors are interacting with their sites and what actions we want them to take e.g. form completions or making a purchase. Think about how you can guide them through this journey, how you prioritise the content on the page and how you provide information that is easy to digest and in a variety of formats e.g. short-form copy, infographics and videos.
  • Build trust
    Hosting highly relevant content that is easy to find, and written using the ‘voice of the customer’, is just one way of building trust with your site visitors. Utilising social reactions that surround your product through social walls is an excellent way to use organic commentary to complement testimonials from liked and trusted brands and individuals on your site. Case studies are also an excellent way of articulating the problems your potential clients may be experiencing, presenting them with a solution, and demonstrating a desirable outcome also helps build high credibility for your product/brand.

If you’d like to speak to an MPG website or database expert to future-proof your marketing, please get in touch.

Team MPG consists of marketing strategists and specialists who have a deep understanding of B2B media/events business models and successful marketing techniques.

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5 areas of strategic importance for your marketing in 2023

by Team MPG, on 12/01/2023

Newsletter • Winter 2023

 

2022 was a year of recovery and return to growth for many B2B media and events businesses, achieved with a laser focus on future-proofing through building resilient marketing functions.

As we reflect on 2022, and optimistically look ahead to another year of growth and scale, we wanted to share the most popular MPG Insights from 2022 on the topics that we believe will continue to be important in 2023.

#1 GA4 – a new frontier in tracking and analytics

Enhanced analytics is coming! 10 years after the launch of Universal Analytics (UA), Google is retiring it for GA4 (Google Analytics 4). GA4 will provide marketers with better user journey mapping, engagement insights and enhanced data visualisations… but this will mean you can no longer track any new data via UA. Now is the time to be transitioning to GA4 to avoid gaps in data and insights!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#2 1st party data – the gold standard in B2B data

More data means more opportunities, but this needs to be the right kind of data! A targeted and growing customer data set, that is compliant, well structured and well maintained, while being enriched by every engagement with an audience member, and fed into well-designed intelligence reports, is one of the most valuable assets a B2B media or events brand could own.

READ THE FULL ARTICLEFurther reading: A practical guide to database optimisation

#3 Integrated outbound marketing – an essential tool for event marketing

Event marketing relies on getting the right messages, to the right people, at the right time – with events taking place on a fixed date, this time sensitivity is a fairly unique challenge. Any successful event marketing strategy uses outbound marketing as a key area for driving these messages to potential delegates. Email marketing needs to be used all the way down the marketing funnel and email communications need to be fully integrated with delegate sales campaigns.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#4 Investing in spex marketing – hyper focus on your most important revenue stream

For many B2B events businesses, growth in revenue from sponsors and exhibitors has been vital to their total growth strategy. However, specific marketing to drive well-qualified, new business leads for the sales team to convert into clients has been neglected. Business leaders who want a strong performance in 2023 need to invest in spex marketing to generate and nurture new business leads for shortened sales cycles and increased spex revenue.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#5 Advocacy marketing – attracting and converting more of the right customers

Having an amplification strategy that enables you to accelerate growth by tapping into your strongest brand advocates and most loyal customers is a cost-effective and relatively easy way to attract more of the right kinds of customers. These brand loyalists could be customers that purchase from you time and time again, key contributors to your product such as speakers of advisory board members, and your own employees. In 2022, we saw some significant developments and good results from some tech tools that automate the advocacy process.

READ THE FULL ARTICLEFurther reading: Activating employee advocacy

Get in touch with Team MPG to find out how you can add more science to your marketing – so your campaigns always hit their mark!

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1st party data has been hot in 2022 for B2B media & events. In 2023 it will be even hotter…

by Team MPG, on 01/12/2022

1st party data has been one of the hottest topics of 2022 – coming up in almost every conversation we’ve had with an MPG client, prospect, or partner. In 2023, this seam of precious stuff that runs through every B2B media and events business is going to be even more important.

Why? Because the captive audiences and communities of B2B information and networking-based brands produce 1st party data that will be more valuable than ever, as:

  • A high degree of relevance within a good customer journey becomes essential to engage and monetise customers, and
  • Google Chrome is phasing out 3rd party cookies. With 65% of the world using Chrome as their main browser, and considering Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox have already phased out 3rd party cookies, this will have a big impact.

Arguably the most valuable asset a B2B media or events brand could own is a targeted and growing customer data set that is compliant, well structured and well maintained, while being enriched by every engagement with an audience member and fed into well-designed intelligence reports.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s make sure we’ve got the basics covered…

What is 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data?

  • 1st party data = any customer data you collect directly and store in your own database. It can be collected from websites, apps, social media, surveys, and more. You can track this data in analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, and you should ideally store it all in one place – i.e. a CRM system such as Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.
  • 2nd party data = 1st party data from a known and trusted source (e.g. names, company names and job titles collected from social media profiles or surveys).
  • 3rd party data = collected, stored, and deployed to ‘resell’ someone else’s audience to multiple sellers of products and services e.g. Google in-market audiences.

Why is it important for you to collect 1st party data, and manage it well?

Despite the fact that having more data can bring more opportunities, there are certain risks in gaining and using data from 2nd or 3rd parties, because collection methods and compliance can be unknown. Additionally, advertising providers relying on 3rd party cookies to collect their data are finding it harder to accurately target the right people.

1st party data, when well-managed, can be very accurately profiled and targeted. This will enable you to promote the right product, to the right person, with the right message, for strong engagement and ROI. Tracking user interest and interactions of your own audience gives you a goldmine of opportunity around monetising your audience.

How is cookie data collection relevant?

A cookie is a file from a website that is stored within a browser, which the same website, or any other website, can retrieve at a later point. Cookies hold the information so servers know which users have visited which websites or specific web pages.

When you drop a cookie on your own website and can see a user completing a certain set of actions across multiple visits to your website, this is classed as 1st party data. Service providers (e.g. Hubspot) can also drop cookies on your behalf, and these are classed as 1st party cookies because they are used to collect information on your behalf to store in your own database.

Larger digital companies that sell advertising based on data, e.g. Google and Facebook, currently also drop cookies on other people’s websites that allow them to track users across a variety of websites. These are called 3rd party cookies.

Where are the emerging opportunities?

Most businesses will have built up a database of 1st party data of their past and present customers. Going forward, there should be a growing demand for access to a targeted audience, enabled by 1st party data.

B2B information businesses that track what their audience members are engaging with on their websites and at their events will be able to put targeted, relevant messages in front of their audience to better monetise their content, community interactions, and audience members – directly (e.g. by selling delegate places) and indirectly (e.g. by selling advertising).

Advertising sold by companies like Google and Facebook that rely on 3rd party content and cookies are likely to become less targeted and less effective. We predict that more advertisers will be willing to pay a higher sum to B2B media and events businesses to more directly and accurately reach relevant target customers more effectively and efficiently.

This is a great opportunity for businesses in the media/events industry to grow their revenues from advertising, sponsorship, and exhibitions – especially if their products are highly relevant and valuable for quite a niche audience.

What should you do about all of this?

The top priorities for any B2B media or events business (or any business for that matter!) should be to:

  1. Ensure your content is unique, valuable, and engaging – so that you can continually attract relevant visitors to your website and events.
  2. Ensure your combined digital, martech, salestech, and data ‘infrastructure’ i.e. integrated systems and processes are well set up to collect, structure, store, maintain, and manage 1st party data.
  3. Ensure you have Google Analytics 4 – or another ‘future-proof’ analytics tool – well set up on your website in a way that allows you to track user behaviours.
  4. Ensure you have dashboards or reports set up that give you strong and real-time visibility of your audience(s) and how they’re engaging with your products and content.

Even if 3rd party cookies weren’t being phased out, 1st party data can be a huge asset to your business – if you make the investment needed to manage and monetise it well.

Do you need help with your 1st party data?

Find out more about MPG’s 1st party data services on this webpage, and please get in touch today if you’d like to have a chat with one of our friendly team members about how to get your 1st party data in good order.

Get in touch today

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Paid media: how to attract more delegates to your conferences

by Team MPG, on 27/10/2022

Paid media – sometimes referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) and digital advertising – is a conference marketing tool that has seen increased interest and investment in 2022.

Its popularity stems from its ability to cost-effectively drive more awareness, leads and revenue for B2B conferences. As a form of online advertising, it also affords marketers a high degree of control and visibility over performance, making it a safe investment when marketing budgets are under scrutiny.

How does paid media work?

Paid media comprises platforms such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Advertising and Facebook Ads. In essence, it is any online ad where advertisers pay for every click.

Marketers define how ads are targeted, using criteria such as job titles, industries, interests, behaviour (e.g. people who have visited your website before), and intent. The latter is how the popular Google Ads Paid Search functions – targeting users based on the relevant queries they are searching in Google, allowing them to be targeted at the time when they are researching solutions that conferences can provide.

Why paid media should be in your marketing repertoire for B2B conferences

  • It allows reach beyond your existing data pool to new, relevant contacts; expanding your dataset and driving more leads and revenue for your conference.
  • It can also support other existing marketing efforts such as email and social media, creating another touch point for your audience to engage with, keeping your conference front of mind.
  • It can also reach, nurture and convert relevant contacts all by itself. The various targeting methods available across channels allows a full-funnel approach that can be conducted solely on paid media.

3 things you should do with paid media for conference delegate marketing

1. Create a robust plan before spending a penny

  • Understand and lay out what you’re trying to achieve. Define success upfront.
  • Divide your budget between the relevant channels and campaigns.
  • Tailor different channels/campaigns/ads to different objectives i.e. stages in the funnel.
  • Ensure messaging is consistent with other channels and ties into customer journeys and the funnel.

2. Ensure visibility of performance and results

  • Ensure conversion tracking is active. Always use tracked links.
  • Understand which metrics matter – depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
  • Use tools like Google Data Studio to consolidate performance data and present in a way all stakeholders can interpret.

3. Leverage the fast pace of conference marketing

  • Urgency-based messaging works well for event-focused paid media campaigns.
  • Use paid media for ‘break news’, such as agenda releases and keynote speaker intros.
  • In the final weeks, narrow geographic targeting and use devices like countdowns to inspire FOMO and maximise ROI.

3 things to avoid with paid media for conference delegate marketing

1. Don’t underinvest, or expect immediate results

  • Clicks are cheap, but you won’t convert everyone.
  • Finding the best approach to PPC takes time and first party data.

2. Never leave your campaigns unattended

  • Review campaign performance at least once a week, ideally daily at the start of a campaign, and then twice a week.
  • Adjust your approach based on the performance data you generate. Make changes to your targeting options and refine to what works best.

3. Don’t neglect your website

  • Ensure landing pages work for ‘cold’ paid media contacts.
  • Utilise lead forms to capture data.
  • Leverage content to capture relevant search queries and increase website engagement.

Overall, your strategy and the skill and rigour that goes into execution will – together – make all the difference to how paid media can drive good attendance and delegate revenue for your events.

Want to find out more about how paid media could boost your conference marketing?

Team MPG can help ensure all PPC results are measured and analysed correctly, so you can see the return on your PPC investment. We will create a strategy, detailed plan and then execute your PPC campaigns for optimal results – so you can get more of the right people to attend your events.

Get in touch today to find out how Team MPG can help you achieve success with PPC in your conference marketing.

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Top 5 marketing investments for sustainable growth

by Team MPG, on 06/10/2022

The world has changed so much in the past 8 years, and so has B2B marketing! Since MPG was launched in early 2014, we’ve had a privileged ‘insiders view’ of the marketing approach of a large number – and great variety – of organisations.

It has been fascinating to witness the continued evolution of B2B publishers – where the most successful organisations have developed ‘brand platforms’, serving up intelligence and connections to their ever more niche audiences.

A customer-first approach has meant the leading organisations – large and small – are ruthlessly focused on delivering what their customers need, how they need it, and when they need it. They know that to engage, monetise and scale, they need the right blend of digital and in-person experiences, with a strong brand at the centre of everything.

In this article we explore the six areas that need ongoing marketing investment – especially at times of uncertainty (including economic downturns).

#1 Brand trust

Building a strong, trusted brand should always be the top priority for every marketer. This requires a strategic investment in developing clear brand positioning and strong brand identity, and then ensuring that every place where a customer engages with your brand has a particular ‘look and feel’ that is recognisable, unique and reassuring.

The cost of engaging a top creative agency can be prohibitive, especially for a niche B2B brand. The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to undergo a costly and time consuming ‘rebranding’ exercise to achieve brand trust.

The very nature of ‘trust’ is that it is based on something genuine. It’s about ‘substance’ more than ‘style’.

If you know what really matters to your customers, and what they genuinely value about what you deliver for them, make sure this is:

  1. Evident in your messaging across all your marketing channels
  2. Well understood by every member of your team, and embedded in mindsets and behaviours

Being a steadfast presence for your customers, and coming across as genuine and reliable at all times, will win you a great deal of brand trust.

It is also very important to ensure your brand design is of a good standard, and that your visual branding is consistent everywhere, including fonts, colours and design devices. A good graphic designer should be able to make this all work well for you.

And if you can afford to bring on board a good agency to help you develop stronger branding than you have now, then do it! It will be worth the investment.

#2 Martech

Martech is no longer an optional investment, and it isn’t an area where you can afford to buy the cheapest solution. The technical debt you will incur by trying to cut corners in how you approach your martech stack is almost guaranteed to hold your business back.

You simply cannot grow your customer base or your revenue above a certain level without good martech tools in place, well integrated for data flows, and with the right processes in place to ensure they do what they’re meant to do. You cannot scale without good tech.

Don’t ignore this area of your marketing because you don’t know how to invest well in it. You may not be able to expertly analyse or optimise your tech stack yourself, but you’ll have a good sense of what is and is not working, and where the biggest issues are that are holding you back from growth.

If this is a weak spot in your marketing, get it seen to as soon as you possibly can. Investing well in the right tech stack for your marketing will make a world of difference in how you can serve your customers – and build your brand.

 

As partners to HubSpot, Marketo, Ingo, Guild and Saltbox, and having set up, optimised and worked in many other platforms such as Mailchimp, Adestra, Sailthru, Zapier, Salesforce and MS Dynamics 365 over the past 8+ years, Team MPG has a strong track record in enabling B2B marketers with the right tools. Get in touch to find out more.

#3 Website

For every B2B brand, your website is by far your most important marketing channel. The perception your customers will have of your brand will first and foremost be based on your website, and nothing will damage brand trust more than a poor website user journey.

Therefore, as with martech, choosing the cheapest solution for a website will almost always cost you dearly in the long run – both in terms of real spend (having to redo your website), and opportunity cost.

Engage a good agency with a strong reputation (make sure you get at least two references), and make sure they follow the step-by-step process laid out in this MPG Insights resource.

When considering the development framework, for smaller companies with relatively simple sites, a good option for a purpose-built site is usually WordPress. For larger projects, we recommend Headless CMS, alongside Laravel to build the backend, and Vue JS to build the frontend (mainly for good loading speed). This combo is more expensive and takes longer to build, but is much more robust and secure.

#4 Analytics

Without analytics set up well across all your marketing channels, starting with your website, you won’t have the intelligence you need to really understand what your customers care about, and to make good marketing decisions.

As business leaders start becoming more focused on marketing ROI, Team MPG is seeing a surge in demand by B2B brands for real-time dashboards and reports that give their marketers and senior executives strong visibility of important marketing metrics.

There is also a stronger appetite for measurement against ‘joined up’ marketing and sales KPIs. This MPG Insights article shares a useful guide on how to achieve strong sales and marketing integration – which is more important than ever.

We’re also seeing B2B brand leaders asking for customer insight reports to deliver intelligence into their content/editorial teams, showing levels of engagement with certain content themes, and often specific pieces of content.

MPG’s experience in building and deploying these kinds of reports are highly valuable for a content-led B2B brand, as long as they are:

  1. Kept relatively simple
  2. Focused on key data points presented with good data visualisation techniques
  3. Easily accessible
  4. Updated in real time

 

Team MPG can help you make better business and marketing decisions by setting up your website and marketing analytics tools in the right way, and building custom dashboards to deliver valuable intelligence to your team. Get in touch to find out more.

#5 Database

Every week we have at least one conversation with a business leader who is immensely frustrated with the state of their customer and/or prospect database!

This foundational part of your 1st party data simply cannot be ignored as you cannot effectively or efficiently communicate with all your existing customers, or find new customers, if your database is not well organised, up to date, and populated with the right data.

This is an essential area for ongoing investment, with the following two key areas needing particular attention if you want to grow your business:

  1. Targeted research to constantly clean, append and grow your target audience data sets – so your marketing can reach all members of decision-making units, not only the main buyer.
  2. Tracking of engagement, at contact level, with your marketing and sales efforts.

Without these two essential pieces in place, your database isn’t the kind of asset you need for business success.

Your database is an asset that needs ongoing investment, delivering a direct, strong and measurable return.

 

Team MPG can help you get your current database into good shape, and we can help you continually grow your data sets to become valuable business assets that consistently deliver a strong return. Get in touch to find out more.

The world and marketing may be changing constantly. But don’t let constant change derail your long term, strategic focus.

By investing in the five areas explored above, you cannot go wrong – as long as you do so in a measured, focused and deliberate manner.

Knee-jerk reactions, looking for the cheapest marketing solutions, focusing too much on ‘quick wins’, and insisting on unreasonably high returns in the short term will set you back.

Play the long game, as the world’s most successful and valuable B2B brands always do.

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MPG Newsletter | Autumn 2022

by Team MPG, on 28/09/2022

Newsletter • Autumn 2022

 

Investing well in marketing leads to business success and growth

Marketing has never been more important in B2B. Now is the time to ruthlessly focus on ensuring your marketing budget is being spent on the right things.

“Companies that have bounced back most strongly from previous recessions usually did not cut their marketing spend, and in many cases actually increased it. But they did change what they were spending their marketing budget on, and when, to reflect the new context in which they operated.”
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Investing well in marketing will be essential to surviving and thriving in the coming months – and years. This means you need to:

✔️ Add as much science as you possibly can to your marketing.

Customer insight, 1st party data, tech, analytics, and data-led strategy must now be built into every marketing function – no matter how large or small your organisation.

Sufficiently relevant, personalised and impactful marketing campaigns can only be possible if you have a strategic, analytical approach, and the right level of investment in your martech and data infrastructure.

✔️ Reduce your data and martech debt – now.

Before it’s too late, put in place:

  1. A well structured database – with good coverage of your target market
  2. Smart marketing automation tools – much more accessible now than a few years ago in terms of cost and user-friendliness
  3. A well-integrated tech stack – with well set up data flows

The longer you carry a legacy of low investment in these essential areas, the more it will cost you to ensure your marketing is effective in the future, especially if you want to grow your business.

By paying attention to the critically important above-mentioned areas, you can get exactly the right messages to exactly the right people, at exactly the right time.

The quality of the content and creative elements you add to your marketing campaigns will certainly also make a big difference. But you need the scientific elements in place first to make sure these campaigns hit their mark.

In this issue of the MPG Insights quarterly newsletter, we focus on how a scientific approach to marketing can make a difference to every business. We highlight the things that senior executives and heads of marketing should be paying close attention to right now when it comes to future marketing investments:

#1 When was your marketing last audited? Do you know where your gaps are?

Your business will suffer if you spend blindly on your marketing. You need to understand which elements of your marketing are performing well, which areas are performing poorly, and where your biggest and most important gaps are.

To ensure a strong ROI, and to future-proof your marketing, you need to know how different types of channels and tactics you have used have worked so far. You also need to know whether the systems, processes and people you need for success are in place.

The MPG Insights team have written a ‘how to’ guide to help you invest in a good marketing audit – so that the money you spend on marketing in 2023 and beyond will deliver a strong return. Questions answered in this resource:

  1. Why should I do a marketing audit?
  2. How should I approach a marketing audit?
  3. What should I include in a marketing audit?
  4. Who should conduct my marketing audit?
  5. What should I expect the output to be from a well-run marketing audit?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

#2 Do you have the marketing skills you need in your business? How will you get the missing skill sets plugged in where you need them?

Your marketing audit will probably tell you there are skill gaps in your team. Some will be critical.

Team MPG have created many resources for leaders considering how best to go about getting all the marketing skills they need in their marketing team. Here are our top 3 most relevant pieces for leaders right now:

  1. Creating a robust, sustainable marketing function: a strategic, hybrid approach
  2. Copywriting: how every B2B marketer can improve this skill set
  3. Don’t take marketing skills for granted: they’re precious and need investment

Enquire about MPG’s Academy for essential marketing skills development

#3 Have you activated advocacy as a powerful marketing tool?

Activating and leveraging advocacy is an important way to get your message out to more of the right people. You can gain almost instant credibility, as well as the trust of a potential customer, based on a recommendation or endorsement from someone they already trust. That ‘someone’ is your advocate – and could be an employee, supplier or customer.

To help MPG’s community get to grips with advocacy marketing, and to understand how to use it to grow rapidly and profitably, we’ve created a number of relevant resources. The top 3 are:

  1. A guide to advocacy and referral marketing
  2. Leveraging the power of advocacy to make your business more resilient
  3. Employee advocacy: unlock this powerful marketing channel

Find out more about how MPG approaches Advocacy Marketing

#4 How well integrated are your marketing and sales processes and KPIs?

Your business will never reach its full potential if your marketing and sales are not well integrated. And marketing and sales integration needs to be approached strategically and holistically – with your customers, and their experiences in dealing with your business, at the very centre of every process.

Take a close look at your marketing and sales funnel. Is it joined up? Are your marketers playing the part they need to at every stage of the funnel? Are they focused on generating, nurturing and qualifying leads? And are your sales people focused on the bottom of the funnel, where they can work their best magic in selling to people who are ready to buy?

Do you have integrated marketing and sales metrics and KPIs – where your marketers and salespeople are all working towards the same end goal, and are rewarded for achieving success together?

These are the KPIs your marketers and salespeople should be focused on (together):

  1. Number of leads
  2. Conversion rates
  3. Number of sales
  4. Average order value
  5. Length of sales cycle
  6. Total revenue

 

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
PETER DRUCKER

Download MPG’s guide to sales and marketing integration

#5 Are your website analytics tools delivering the value you need? And is your Google Analytics update to GA4 – so you don’t lose data?

Not having the most basic website analytics tools in place means you really are flying blind.

Relying on anecdotal evidence from your marketers or sales people is going to hold you back from growing your business. Not having the metrics to tell you how your customers are engaging with your website could be fatal – especially in the current business environment.

If you use Google Analytics, GA4 is the new version you need to put in place very soon. As a team of digital-first, analytical and data-led marketers, Team MPG have been through extensive GA4 training, and ensured GA4 is well implemented for websites we work on, to deliver essential customer insight. Have you done the same with your marketing function?

This MPG Insights article explains how, quite soon, you won’t be able to collect any more tracking data via your Google Analytics account, unless you have implemented GA4.

It is also important to note that there are a number of significant differences between Google’s current Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4, such as not being able to track through the use of 3rd party cookies. This means you won’t be able to easily deploy GA4 without training – even if you’re an expert in UA.

We strongly recommend – as an urgent priority – that you ensure you have strong analytics expertise plugged into your business. This may require training of current internal staff members, or you may want to hire in an analytics specialist (if your business is sizeable). The other option you have is finding an external partner to implement GA4 well for you. The same partner should then be able to help you pull valuable data from GA4 into your business, as ongoing intelligence, to enable de-risked, data-led, decision-making.

Read MPG’s guide on GA4

Get in touch with Team MPG to find out how you can add more science to your marketing – so your campaigns always hit their mark!

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If you don’t integrate marketing & sales – you can’t grow

by Team MPG, on 14/07/2022

Scale requires well integrated sales and marketing.

‘Sales and marketing integration’ feels like one of these jargonny terms that we’ve all started screening out.

It’s over-used in the content marketing pushed out by martech and salestech providers who promise the world – and frustratingly often seem to underdeliver.

Why is that?

Because, the people and process piece is MUCH harder than the tech piece.

While the tech companies are delivering the tools, the ‘people and process’ piece on how best to use them is failing. The teams in the businesses buying and using the tech are not developing and following the strategies and processes needed to make the tech work. One might argue it’s the responsibility of the tech vendors to offer more support on the ‘people and process’ piece. But, regardless of who will do it – it needs to be done!

Since 2014, MPG has been working with business leaders to grow their B2B brands – enabled by marketing strategy, analytics, tech, data and digital. The sales and marketing alignment piece is usually a problem when companies approach us to help them achieve better outcomes from their marketing. And this is what we have witnessed in the most dysfunctional businesses:

  • Sales people are determined to defend their turf – wanting to claim revenue as ‘sales revenue’, even when marketing makes a significant contribution. Why would marketers want to work hard to support sales if they don’t get at least some of the credit (or the commission)?
  • At the same time, marketers are still not being held accountable for commercial results, often hiding behind ‘tech and data jargon’. They’re usually very, very busy, but are not taking responsibility for the outcomes of their spend on tech, data and all those very busy marketing people.
  • Senior executives – including Sales Leaders and Heads of Marketing – are not taking real responsibility for the close collaboration, joined up processes and combined KPI’s that the integrated marketing and sales funnel should deliver.

This is all very dangerous, because how B2B customers buy has changed in a BIG way.

Customers are buying very differently now to how they were 2 years ago, and if Sales and Marketing Leaders don’t get their heads together and work out how to optimise the full customer experience, their businesses will:

  1. Lose customers
  2. Be less efficient
  3. Be less profitable
  4. Struggle to scale

It is incredibly important for your marketing and sales teams to be integrated if you want to grow your business. If you support sales effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring marketing is well set up with the right strategy, processes, tools and resources, you will be able to:

  1. Reach and engage with a larger number of potential customers
  2. Qualify and nurture leads better to achieve higher conversion rates, higher average order values and shorter sales cycles.
  3. Measure important KPIs critical to achieving growth.

 

To learn more about how you achieve faster and more profitable growth by integrating your sales and marketing function better, thereby ensuring the whole, combined funnel is fully optimised, download the MPG’s guide here.

 

This resource walks you through the following 3 stages of the sales and marketing funnel:

 

#1 Awareness (top of funnel)

  • In this stage, prospects are indicating there is a problem or opportunity that they may be able to address by investing in your product.
  • Prospects are starting to educate themselves, conducting research to understand, frame, and give a name to the problem or opportunity they are facing.
  • This is where you should focus marketing efforts on building brand awareness, interest and an audience of relevant prospects through inbound marketing and data acquisition. Email marketing targeting relevant people should also be used at this stage of the funnel, especially for very time-sensitive campaigns, such as those that support B2B events.
  • Here your aim is to draw in as many of the right people as possible – with the overall goal of pushing them to your website.

 

#2 Engagement (middle of funnel)

  • In this second stage of the funnel, the prospect has defined their issue or opportunity, and they want to do more in-depth research to understand all the available approaches or methods for addressing a challenge or making the most of an opportunity.
  • Due to widespread, rapid adoption by consumers of more digital behaviours, and preferences for more control of their own buying journey, marketing needs to play an important role here in terms of serving up content-led and product-led messages across multiple channels and tactics – all working together with joined up messaging.
  • At this stage of the funnel, marketing needs to grow engagement and convert people who pay attention to their marketing into qualified leads – giving them ways to signal their intent and readiness to buy – before they are contacted by a salesperson.

 

#3 Conversion (bottom of funnel)

  • This third stage is where sales people need to get involved – and as part of a joined up process with marketing, ensure they call the right people (i.e. those people marketers have identified as relevant and ready to buy) at the right time (i.e. soon after they have indicated intent – because at this time they’re probably also talking to your competitors).
  • Marketing still needs to play a part here in terms of further nurturing your leads until sales people get the opportunity to speak to the prospect. It can often be quite difficult for a salesperson to pin down a prospect for a call or meeting, and in that time they can go cold or pay more attention to competitors. So marketing needs to play it’s part here by continuing to engage and persuade this lead with strong content and collateral – where the USPs and benefits of your product come through loud and clear in regular reminders to your lead that they should be picking up the phone when your salesperson calls.

Unfortunately, what often still happens, is that both marketing and sales work on the awareness stage, but only sales focuses on the engagement and conversion stages. This means that sales people have less time to spend on selling, and they are trying to sell to people who are not yet ready to buy. This has a negative impact on sales cycle length, average order value, conversion rates, the number of sales made and amount of revenue one sales person can generate.

What should happen is that marketers take full responsibility for the first two stages of the funnel (awareness and engagement), and be held accountable for the quality, quantity and sales-readiness of leads being delivered to sales. This then means that the sales team can spend more time focusing on conversions i.e. doing the actual selling that they’re so good at.

 

You need to get your funnel working in a way that enables more scalable digital marketing to reach and engage more people in the top two thirds of the funnel, and therefore have your sales team focused on conversions at the bottom of the funnel. Once you have achieved this, you would have unlocked profitable, sustainable growth with economies of scale baked in to your business in way that will generate higher profits and add significant value to your business.

 

To learn more about how to manage your scalable, profitable integrated sales and marketing funnel download MPG’s guide to B2B Sales & Marketing integration.

Do you need your marketing team to deliver more leads for your sales team?

Team MPG can help you attract new clients with targeted, lead generating marketing campaigns. We can also help create marketing and sales performance dashboards so that you can measure your joined up marketing and sales KPIs and ROI.

Get in touch today to find out how we can help you.

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