This month in B2B Marketing Simplified, I want to discuss a critical topic that doesn’t receive the focus it deserves among B2B founders and CEOs: measuring and reporting marketing data.
Before you read on, at the end of this month’s newsletter, I’m giving you some free bonuses:
- A copy of my simple KPI Tracking Google Sheet
- A Loom video on how to adapt and use it in your business
- And a voice note from me on my thoughts on tracking and measuring
Have a listen to what I think on this topic, tap below to listen to my thoughts on this important topic for B2B businesses (6-minute listen).
In my experience, CEOs and founders don’t avoid tracking and measuring because they don’t care; it’s that reporting on marketing performance often feels like a bit of a faff, and without an experienced Head of Marketing or CMO, the team don’t know what or how to track.
Too many dashboards and too many acronyms are flying around from the marketing team. Essentially, too much noise to make any real decisions from it.
But you’re not alone.
In a Martech Alliance study, a concerning 43% of marketing leaders admitted their teams are using vanity metrics that don’t map to business goals. Stats like Page views. Likes. Impressions. Numbers that sound good in a deck, but don’t tell you if it’s moving the business forward.
And the knock-on effect? CEOs and founders don’t get the data they need to better support their business growth objectives.
Let me give you a real example.
I recently worked with a B2B services firm that had plateaued with their growth.
18 months of flat growth. Lots of activity, but zero traction.
On paper, they were doing all the right things, Google Ads, creating content and email campaigns.
But under the surface, it was chaotic:
❌ No idea which channels were converting.
❌ No split between brochure downloads and genuine sales leads.
❌ No structured follow-up process with leads.
So we stripped it back:
✅ Built a simple KPI tracker in Google Sheets (keep reading to grab yours)
✅ Started tracking leads, demo calls, and sales
✅ Split out low-intent vs sales-qualified leads
And guess what we found?
Their content was pulling traffic, but converting nothing. The real gold was coming from demo calls, only problem? Barely anyone was getting there.
We made a few smart changes to how and what they measured and, in just 3 months:
- More qualified leads
- Higher conversions
- And most importantly, the founder finally understood where growth was coming from.
Measuring your marketing isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s how you avoid wasting time and money.
Did you know, over a third of marketers say they rarely or never measure ROI (Marketing Week, 2024).
Which means one in three CEOs or founders reading this are spending serious money on marketing and have no idea what’s working. Are you one of them?
If so, that’s a problem. Because if you’re not getting clear data back from your marketing team, you can’t make informed decisions. You don’t know what to double down on or when to change course.
We’ve all seen what happens when companies miss the signals. Kodak. Blockbuster. They didn’t lack resources, they lacked clarity of what was happening day to day in their business.
Meanwhile, companies that do scale… Think retail companies like ASOS in its early years and SHEIN more recently.
They tend to do one thing well, they stay close to the numbers and the trends in the business and wider world. They don’t measure every number, just the right ones for them.
You don’t need more data. You need the right data to steer smarter decisions, faster.
3 steps to start measuring now
Before I share my top three, I’m not saying you need some enterprise-level analytics stack. Most of the time for clients I work with, I recommend the opposite.
McKinsey found that companies using marketing analytics to inform decisions are more than twice as likely to outperform competitors on revenue growth.
Step 1 – Metrics to start with for a small B2B business:
- How many leads does your website bring in? You should break these down into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads)
- What’s your cost per lead? This is simply how much you spend on marketing divided by the number of leads you’re getting?
- What’s your cost per sale? Like cost per lead, this is simply you’re spend on marketing, divided by the number of sales
- What’s the lifetime value of a customer? To be able to really understand how much to invest in marketing, you need to understand what a customer is worth to your business over their lifetime (not just a single invoice).
And like I said above, split out low-intent form fills (MQLs) from real enquiries, the coveted sales qualified leads (SQLs).
Even just tracking those few things will give you more confidence in your decisions.
Step 2 – When you’re tracking and measuring, you can use AI to simplify the grunt work:
- Tools like Looker Studio can integrate with lots of other platforms like Google Analsytics to pull in your data
- ChatGPT (you can literally import a spreadsheet and ask questions).
- AI built into your CRM
What used to take hours to analyse and understand, can now take seconds and minutes.
3. Before you even open a spreadsheet, ask this:
What decisions do I need to make this month?
“Do I need to pause a channel?”
“Do I need to spend more money somewhere?”
“Is it time to rethink our messaging?”
Then focus on measuring what matters most to help you make those decisions.
Bonus for readers
In this edition, you’ll find:
- Download and duplicate the simple KPI tracker (Google Sheets)
- Watch a 2-min Loom walkthrough of the KPI tracker
TL;DR: For time-poor leaders
If your marketing is busy but unclear, here’s your cheat sheet:
- Get visibility on what’s actually driving growth
- Focus on my simple, high-impact metrics to get started now
- Ditch dashboard overwhelm with a decision-first mindset
- Use AI to do the grunt work
- Start measuring what matters now, so you’re not still guessing by year-end
Growth stalled? Find out what’s holding your business back
In just 3 minutes, you’ll get a bespoke report highlighting the key factors affecting business growth as well as tailored recommendations to help you break the growth wall.
