Marketing Services B2B: Chasing ROI

Leveraging Marketing Services B2B for ROI

Business-to-business (B2B) companies are seeing the value of marketing services B2B. Suppose you find a suitable partner and start with a solid strategy. In that case, you can easily multiply your marketing results, generating more leads, building brand visibility, and even closing sales.

But how can you tell whether your marketing services perform as well as you intuitively believe?

The answer is with marketing services B2B ROI.

What Is Marketing Services B2B ROI?

Let’s break this down. First, return on investment, or ROI, refers to the value you get from something compared to the inputs. This is a standard topic in the investment world. But it also strongly relates to marketing; just as investors hope to generate dividend income from stocks or rental income from properties, marketers hope to generate more leads and more closed sales from the money they put into their marketing strategies.

The first part of the equation refers to marketing services for B2B companies. Suppose you’re marketing your business to other businesses using a B2B marketing agency or a freelancer team. In that case, it pays to know how much value you’re getting compared to your spending.

Why Marketing Services B2B ROI Matters

B2B ROI isn’t just a metric to study out of curiosity. It can have a massive impact on your bottom-line results and the future of your business.

These are just some of the reasons:

• Objectively quantifying results. Nearly all B2B marketing service providers will claim to be beneficial for your bottom line, but can they prove it? A service provider’s claims they’re doing a great job doesn’t mean they are. But once you crunch the numbers, you can quickly determine whether or not this investment makes sense; if you have a positive ROI and you’re making more money than you’re spending, the partnership is likely worth continuing. This equation gets even more complicated when you consider that ROI has a wide possible range. Even if you see a positive ROI, there’s a chance you’re not getting as big a boat return as you could if you were living up to your full potential.
• Generating new ideas. Studying ROI broadly and with respect to specific strategies is also an excellent tool for generating new ideas. You and your marketing service provider can crunch the numbers and determine which of your strategies have been most effective. For example, you might decide that your SEO strategy has a much higher ROI than your paid advertising strategy to shift your resources and strategic efforts accordingly. Even more specifically, you might find that your content that focuses on one topic consistently outperforms other topics; you can use this information to brainstorm better pieces of content aligned with this topic.
• Motivating even better performance. Measuring and reviewing ROI consistently can also motivate better performance from your B2B  marketing service provider. If your service provider knows that you’re actively and precisely measuring ROI, they will be incentivized to boost that ROI over time; they want to prove themselves so they can continue working with you.

How to Calculate Marketing Services ROI

The basic formula for calculating ROI in any application is comparing the return of your investment to its initial costs. For example, if you spend $3,000 on a new marketing strategy and earn $6,000, as a result, you’ll end up with a $3,000 return on investment. Depending on the methodology, you could present this as a 100 percent return (covering the initial costs, plus that total value once over) or a 200 percent return (covering what you spent twice over).

You can ballpark ROI quite quickly, but generating a specific and accurate result requires attention to many different variables. At the outset, you can calculate how much you spend on your B2B marketing services and roughly estimate how much new traffic, conversions, and sales you generate; for example, you might figure that you spend $5,000 on a monthly agency retainer, while the agency, on average, helps you get $10,000 of new sales.

That said, there are other costs and other benefits you’ll need to consider in your equation. You’ll need to think about brand visibility and your brand reputation, which can both be challenging to measure. You’ll need to think about your time working with your agency and managing their work. You’ll even need to consider the secondary and tertiary costs of your marketing and advertising campaigns, such as if you pay for advertising outside the context of your agency relationship.

It’s also a good idea to calculate ROI in many different contexts. You can calculate overall ROI by adding up every variable you can think of – but you can also calculate ROI on an individual strategy level. You’ll have a much richer understanding of your B2B marketing services relationship if you do both.

Keys to Maximizing Marketing Services B2B ROI

What steps can you take to maximize your marketing services’ B2B ROI?

• Choose the right partner. So much of your marketing ROI depends on the quality and integrity of your B2B marketing agency partner. Strong marketing partners offer a wide range of services, do quality work, and push themselves to help their clients see better results. Also, if they aren’t satisfied with the results they’re seeing, they’ll go out of their way to provide more support. Research your options carefully and only choose a marketing partner you truly trust.
• Communicate your goals. You know your business well, so make it a point to communicate your goals and what you consider most valuable. For example, are you more interested in traffic or leads? Do you want a high volume of leads or higher lead quality?
• Clarify your brand strategy. Your brand is the heart of all your marketing and advertising strategies, setting the tone and direction for most of your work. In addition, your marketing service provider can only effectively improve your ROI if they understand your brand as well as you do – so make sure to clarify these points.
• Attend all meetings. Most marketing agencies will meet with you regularly to discuss ideas, evaluate progress, and set direction moving forward. Make sure to attend and participate in these meetings so you can provide input and feedback when necessary, ultimately guiding your partnership to better results.
• Provide resources and answers promptly. Occasionally, your marketing agency will require things from you, such as brand assets or responses to pressing questions. When prompted, try to respond as accurately and quickly as possible to preserve your marketing momentum.
• Aid in brainstorming. An ideal marketing partnership isn’t just a talented agency doing all the work; it’s an active partnership in which both parties are engaged in brainstorming and planning. Make sure to invest your time and resources into developing new potential marketing ideas.
• Remain flexible and open to new ideas. The marketing world is constantly changing, with new technologies, trends, and opportunities due to competitive and market changes. To make the most of your marketing partnership, remaining flexible and open to new ideas is essential. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
• Take full advantage of available services. Your marketing agency probably offers a number of marketing B2B services, so if you’re only tapping them for one or two independent strategies, you’re not using them to their full potential. Instead, use omnichannel, integrated marketing to see better results overall.
• Pay close attention to reports. Marketing agencies typically send regular reports on their activities and results, informing you about your overall marketing progress. Don’t merely glance through these reports; read them, understand them, ask questions, and make sure to clarify any points you’re confused about. It’s your best opportunity to get critical information on how your strategies are performing – so you can make changes when necessary.
• Ignore vanity metrics. Specific metrics in marketing and advertising can be considered “vanity metrics” and should mostly be ignored. They sound good, but in practical terms, they aren’t always correlated with higher ROI. For example, getting more page likes on Facebook doesn’t mean you will generate more traffic or sales.
• Push for better results. If you’re not satisfied with the ROI you see, push your partner for better results. Proactively explain your expectations and collaborate with your partner to develop a game plan for improvement.
• Invest more (when you’re ready). When you find individual strategies that work well, increase your investments in them. If you double your spending on an effective strategy (all other variables being equal), you’ll double your nominal return.

Do you want more value out of your B2B marketing services? Are you tired of dealing with agencies and freelancers in the marketing industry that can’t objectively prove their value? Increase your marketing ROI with NewPoint Marketing – you can get started by filling out this short form today!