Every year, industrial marketing leaders face the same challenge: how to prove that marketing isn't just a cost centre but a strategic driver of business growth. While tech companies can point to clear attribution models and quick sales cycles, those in industrial b2b often struggle to connect marketing efforts to revenue generation.
Trust in marketing measurement is low, with 64% of b2b marketing leaders feeling that their organisation doesn't trust measurement for decision-making. This is not because you’re not generating value—rather, traditional ways to measure return on marketing investment don’t reflect the complexity of the industrial sector, where sales cycles span months (or years) and relationships matter as much as metrics.
The actual cost of poor marketing measurement
Most industrial b2b organisations still rely on basic metrics like website traffic, email open rates and trade show leads. While these numbers matter, they don't tell the full story of marketing's impact on revenue generation and business growth.
When we can't effectively measure marketing's impact, three critical problems emerge:
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Budget constraints: Without precise ROI data, marketing often faces budget cuts during tough times
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Strategic limitations: Lack of measurement makes it harder to optimise and improve programs
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Credibility gaps: Marketing teams struggle to be seen as strategic partners rather than tactical support
A new framework for industrial return on marketing investment
Instead of forcing consumer marketing metrics onto industrial b2b, we need a framework that reflects our unique challenges. Here's how to build one that makes sense for complex industrial sales cycles and technical buying decisions.
Define value beyond direct revenue
Industrial marketing creates value in ways that aren't immediately visible in a traditional ROI calculator. When selling complex technical solutions, marketing is crucial in shortening sales cycles by educating prospects before they speak to sales. It supports technical product launches by creating deep, educational content that helps engineers and technical buyers understand new solutions.
Perhaps most importantly, it provides sales teams with resources that help them communicate with technical users and business decision-makers. This combination of technical authority and commercial impact builds genuine market leadership in specific sectors.
Map the full customer journey
Traditional attribution models often miss crucial touchpoints in industrial sales, leading to undervalued marketing contributions. Technical buyers might spend months researching solutions through white papers, technical specifications, and application guides before ever filling out a form. Business teams often engage deeply with content, sharing it internally and using it to build business cases long before they're ready for sales conversations.
Even after initial contact, marketing continues to support the journey through specification development and technical validation phases. Understanding these complex engagement patterns is crucial for accurately measuring ROI.
Implement proper measurement systems
Success in measuring industrial return on marketing investment requires robust systems and processes. This starts with proper integration between your CRM and marketing platforms to capture the full scope of prospect engagement. You'll need clear definitions of marketing-qualified leads that reflect technical and commercial readiness. Revenue attribution models must account for long sales cycles and multiple decision-makers, while regular reporting cadence ensures you can adjust strategies based on real performance data.
The key is creating a measurement framework that captures both immediate impact and long-term value creation. While immediate metrics like lead generation matter, the real value often lies in how marketing accelerates technical validation, shortens complex sales cycles and builds lasting market authority.
Steps to implement the framework
1. Audit your current measurement capabilities
Start by auditing your current measurement capabilities. This means taking a hard look at your existing systems and processes. What data are you currently capturing? Where are the gaps? Most industrial organisations we work with discover they're tracking basic metrics like website visits and email opens, but missing crucial technical engagement signals that indicate real buying intent.
2. Define what success looks like for your organisation
Next, define what success truly looks like for your organisation. This goes beyond standard marketing metrics to include business outcomes that matter to your leadership team. For instance, you might shift your success metrics from pure lead volume to measuring how marketing activities influence specification rates in tender processes. This change might help you demonstrate marketing's impact on winning larger contracts.
3. Incorporate the right tracking system
With clear goals established, focus on implementing the right tracking systems. This often means integrating your CRM with marketing platforms, setting up proper UTM tracking and creating dashboards that showcase both marketing activities and their business impact. The key is building a system that can track engagement across your technical content, customer support interactions, and sales conversations.
4. Create regular reporting rhythms
Finally, establish regular reporting rhythms that keep everyone aligned. Monthly dashboards should track progress against key metrics, while quarterly reviews can dive deeper into how marketing activities are influencing sales cycles and customer relationships. It might help to hold regular meetings where marketing and sales teams review the data together, ensuring both teams understand how their efforts combine to drive business growth.
Proving return on marketing investment isn't just about justifying budgets – it's about understanding what works so you can do more of it.
Ready to build a measurement framework that captures your true marketing impact? Let's book a strategy call and discuss how we can help you move beyond basic metrics to demonstrate real business value.
Brand chemistry is a b2b marketing agency that transforms traditional industrial players into dynamic market leaders. We help industrial titans blend their heritage with innovation, setting them on the path to market domination.