BEST PRACTICE: Measure for measure

According to a report by Forrester Research, in 2005 B2B marketers spent more than $77 billion on DM, telemarketing, Internet marketing, commercial email and other direct media. The question that all these marketers are asking themselves is: what level of return did they get on their investment? With tightening budgets, pressure to deliver measurable results increases each year, but many businesses in the B2B sector continue to struggle as they look for metrics they can apply to their marketing activities. Traditional media is certainly still in the marketing mix, but digital channels are now proving almost irresistible as they can provide fast and direct measurable metrics.

Choosing the right channel for a marketing campaign is now more crucial than ever. With increasing digital channels competing with traditional media, it's not surprising that many businesses in the B2B arena are finding it difficult to identify the right channel for them let alone ensure they have adequate metrics in place to track their campaigns.

“In practice, I think B2B marketers spend more time on choosing among traditional and emerging interactive channels than they do on getting the metrics right,” says Laura Ramos, VP on Forrester's Marketing Strategy & Technology Research Team. “They seem to intuitively understand that you can't determine whether a tactic/channel is productive without baseline – and then campaign-centric – measurements. However, our research shows that B2B marketers are wasting time and effort on a boatload of tactics that aren't very effective, according to their own admission.”