Before creating your marketing strategy, you need to first decide what you hope to accomplish with marketing. By setting goals, you can then choose the best tactics to achieve those goals, and you can also create metrics to confirm those tactics are working. If you’re stuck on what your exact marketing goals might be, then read on for 9 measurable B2B marketing goals.

1. Consultations Scheduled

The underlying goal of any marketing effort is to create more clients. For many companies, one of the most important steps is having a consultation with the potential client. Often at this stage, the prospect transitions from marketing to sales, and it is up to your sales team to convert them to a client. It is critical that marketing efforts always tie back to the stage if your business depends on consultations to make sales.

2. Free Trial Sign-Ups

A common marketing goal for online subscription-based businesses, free trial sign-ups allow both marketers and the engineering/design team to understand what customers like and don’t like about the product as well as how they actually use it. If offering a free trial or a “freemium” version of your platform is part of your pricing strategy, then your marketing strategy and implementation tactics should lead back to this goal.

3. Email Sign-Ups

Because the B2B sales cycle tends to be longer, it’s unlikely that you’ll convert a client the first time they visit your website. One way to maintain that relationship is by providing unique content through email. Overtime, the potential client will learn more about you, and they will complete a goal closer to the bottom of the funnel, such as scheduling a consultation.

4. Free Quote Requested

Offering a “free quote” on your website is a way to achieve two goals: email sign-ups and consultation calls. If you include the sales call as part of the quote, then your sales team can begin to develop a relationship with the potential client. Some people simply want an estimate, however, and may be annoyed if they have to take a call to receive the quote. With this approach, you will still have an email to continue building the relationship, and you can use this exercise to learn more about the price sensitivity of your customers.

5. Event/Webinar Sign-Up (and Attendance)

If you position your company as an expert, then you can use events or webinars to showcase that expertise. When sharing really valuable information through these events, you build trust with your audience, which will ideally lead to them wanting to hear more from your company. After the event, you will normally have their email to follow up and hopefully convert a few attendees to consultation calls.

6. Sharing Content

Since many companies use blogs to provide information, tracking “shares” of the content, whether on social media or through email, can give you insight into if it is resonating with your audience. With more shares, you will reach a larger audience who finds your content useful. This is a more top-of-the-funnel goal in the buyer’s journey, but it is a great way to monitor that you are expanding your reach.

7. Articles Read (Time on site)

Similar to sharing content, monitoring to see how many articles a user reads on your website as well as the overall time on your site will show how engaging your content is for your audience. As you alter your content, you should ideally see people spending more time on the website and taking action on some of your other goals (such as email subscriptions or consultations scheduled).

8. Increased Website Traffic

With digital marketing playing a larger role in the B2B landscape, increasing traffic to your website is often critical to success. Your website is the portal to achieving other goals (i.e. email sign ups and consultations scheduled), and driving more people to your website is a critical step in any marketing plan.

With more traffic, you also have more data to understand what content speaks most to your audience. Just make sure your traffic is related to your target audience. An increase in traffic from other sources will not help you to achieve the other goals on this list.

9. Customer Retention

While many marketing goals focus on acquiring customers, it is equally important to retain existing customers. Here you will use marketing efforts to renew subscriptions, encourage reordering of products, or to schedule time with a sales team to discuss contract renewal.

Next Steps:

With these marketing goals in mind, it is important that you develop a comprehensive strategy that ties them back to your actual marketing tactics. With goals that contain measurable metrics, you can measure real progress and pivot if you don’t see results to ensure you achieve your ultimate goals.

9 Measurable B2B Marketing Goals