By Brian Hansford, VP of Client Services at Heinz Marketing
Compelling content fuels our business at Heinz Marketing. Matt’s DNA is deeply embedded in each of us to develop new and innovative ideas for our clients and for our followers. Content is strategically critical for our business in ways we can’t always measure. But that’s not good enough. We also measure how B2B content drives B2B revenue in ways you can as well. Here’s how we do it.
We measure where our business comes from using several different attribution and influence models powered by Bizible, Marketo and Salesforce. We publish our content through paid, earned, owned, and social channels. All of these channels have attribution touch points we can track throughout the sales process. With Bizible we calculate the opportunity value attribution for each content asset and the ROI based on overall campaign budgets and actual costs.
Content Attribution Reports
We use full-path attribution calculations to measure each content touch point leading to a sale. These four reports show the full funnel progression from early through opportunity stages. The 4 reports are:
1. First Touch count for each asset
2. Lead Created count for each asset
3. Opportunity count for each asset
4. All attributable content assets per opportunity
We can’t measure everything
Content drives most of our revenue, but not all of it, and this is normal. For example, we receive a significant portion of business from referrals, direct sales engagement, and repeat business. In many cases, those opportunities do not have attributable content touch points. I am perfectly comfortable with this. Content won’t drive every lead or opportunity.
We measure the content that drives the anonymous First Touch and Lead Creation form submissions. We then measure the content that led to the significant Opportunity Creation milestone. Finally, we track all attributable content assets in each Opportunity.
NOTE: It’s entirely possible to have a First Touch and Lead Creation happen with the same asset.
Content isn’t always attributable to these stages. Some leads and opportunities are sourced through content campaigns, while others are not. Some content may be attributable to Opportunity Creation without another content asset that drives the First Touch. This demonstrates how marketing doesn’t always source leads or opportunities. Sometimes leads and opportunities aren’t influenced by marketing in attributable ways. Just because an asset doesn’t have an attribution touch point or low numbers in lead creation doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. Some high-value content may have low numbers for consumption but help influence a significant amount of revenue. Be smart is analyzing the numbers. The great news is that marketers can measure the leads and opportunities that are influenced by attributable touch points.
First Touch Content Attribution Report
We identify the leading content assets that contacts use to engage with us before converting from anonymous to identified stages. These reports reveal popular topics and can inform new complementary topics and assets. For this report in July, we are attributing 64 First Touch ‘leads’ to the Heinz Marketing Blog. The next First Touch content asset is a 4-year-old blog we have on the Challenger Sale! The URL’s for each of the most popular content assets are listed. You will also notice these assets have other attributable touchpoints with the total number of records listed next to the URL.
Lead Creation Content Attribution Report
The Lead Creation report shows the content assets that drove the most conversions with identifiable contact information. In many cases a First Touch anonymous lead will have an attribution touch point to Lead Creation. However, we also have a massive amount of leads that start in the Lead Creation stage. In this report for July, the Full Funnel Marketing book is the leading content lead creator. Our MarTech Landscape is a close second followed by our Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide. One of our top Lead Creation assets is our “Who We Are” web page on HeinzMarketing.com. The page lists all of our team members with bios and background and lead creation occurs from newsletter subscriptions on the page. Pretty cool!
Opportunity Creation Content Attribution
This report gets into the dollar value attributed with each Opportunity. (I have blocked out the dollar amounts from our business.) We track the specific content assets and the number of assets that we attribute to the Opportunity Creation stage. We use Bizible for full path attribution weighting that provides values for each touch point in the customer journey. In some cases, an asset may have a low percentage attribution contribution to an opportunity. The full path attribution percentages are cumulative across the number of touchpoints. Taken with the Opportunity amounts we are able to determine the leading content drivers based on topic, channel, and format.
Opportunity Full Content Attribution Story
Lastly, we tie it all together where we track all attributable content and influence on an Opportunity with a dollar value. (I blocked the dollar amounts and the names of contacts from each Opportunity, for obvious reasons.) This report provides valuable insights on the content consumed, when, and by whom. We often see that multiple people from a company consume content. This isn’t a surprise to us, especially in the world of Account-Based Marketing. But here we show definitively who consumes content and the percentage influence we can attribute to the Opportunity.
You Can Do This
We are very fortunate to have the marketing technology infrastructure, data, and content assets to help us learn these insights. We are using workflow and data to help us measure and manage all of the elements that drive our revenue. This isn’t rocket science. You can do it too. Marketing Performance Management is an important practice which is enabled for by tools like Bizible. (Solutions from Full Circle Insights, Allocadia, Funnelwise, and Hive9 can also help provide these valuable attribution and MPM insights.)
The important takeaway is that we can measure how content drives revenue and this is a standard which B2B marketers should work towards.
Join us for an online interactive workshop! Marketing Performance Management: Know the Past, Direct the Future
September 12th and 13th from 11am – 1pm PDT
