Most marketers are tracking the wrong metrics. Here’s a better way.

This is the first installation in a series about how to make your marketing more efficient. You can check out the second blog here.

Marketing is harder than it looks. A lot harder. 

The goal is pretty straightforward: to identify prospects and turn them into customers as efficiently as possible. The challenge is that all customers are not equally good assets, and the process of sorting them is very inefficient, even with advanced tools.

We understand.

The wrong customers will make your life difficult without improving your bottom line. So your goal is to attract the right ones: the people who have a genuine need for your product or service, and are willing to spend money on it. And from there, you want to identify the ones from that group who create the most positive impact for you. 

Why does it seem like quality customers are so hard to find?

It’s because most of the time, marketers get caught up in focusing on the wrong things. Roles. Channel performance. Downloads. Sales numbers. They conduct market research, segment their customers, create buyer personas, and collect feedback. While these are important metrics, they don’t tell enough of the real story.

That’s why—despite most people’s best attempts to be smart and creative and precise and efficient—they end up with more quantity leads than quality leads.

Targeting quality customers is about three things: 

1. Identifying those who are genuinely interested in a lasting relationship with your brand

2. Understanding the revenue they can bring in over time as engaged customers who stick around, and...

3. Cultivating long-term relationships with them. 

Ok, I’ve been looking in the wrong places. How do I fix that?

Remember, the true value of any lead lies in their potential to become your loyal long-term customer. So if you want your marketing to make a real difference for the business, you should be thinking about revenue from the get-go. Don't just market to the people who make a single purchase.

Look at what customers do after they buy. Go beyond the actions that fed into their acquisition cost. Your GTM strategies should be built around people who bring revenue into the company in multiple ways.

Taking a revenue-focused approach to marketing.

To develop this for your business, you need to delve deeper into the data. Go farther than you’ve done with traditional methods, and explore some innovative approaches. Be sure to measure the payback period and prioritize revenue generation. The right customers will stay, renew, and expand their contracts, aligning their priorities with the product. These are the customers who provide valuable insights for product improvement. 

The good news is you have more knowledge about what actually motivates these potential customers than you realize. 

How do you leverage this knowledge? 

Insights can help you predict a customer's potential value before they even make a purchase. Imagine that! But just like with customers, you need the right kind of insights. Anything you already know…isn’t an insight. Guessing at something, then testing it? That’s not an insight either. 

The best kind of insight is something you didn't see coming. 

For starters: what do your users do immediately after they sign up? Do you know what their first five actions are? Is there a commonality among them that indicates higher LTV? 

If you can’t answer those questions, you may need some new tools.

Ok, so this all sounds great. How do I actually do it?

You need to bring behavioral analytics into your marketing efforts. Behavioral analytics go far deeper than conversion data, revealing the true value of each customer to the business. 

Behavioral analytics allow you to collect and analyze data on user interactions, then track these actions and behaviors to understand trends and preferences. This way, you can learn which users derive the most value from your product, and inform your targeting, messaging, and campaign strategies to attract these highly desirable customers. 

Behavioral analytics lets you:

• Build campaigns around what customers already like and value about your product

• Understand cross-device journeys

• Segment users based on the value they’re already getting from the product.

• See what kind of messages work—and which don’t work.

• Know which of your actions influence repeat purchases, activation, retention, etc.

As you can see, the path to high-quality insights is paved with behavioral analytics. And behavioral analytics is what lets you directly correlate your marketing efforts to business revenue.

Voila! You’re now taking a revenue-focused approach to marketing.

Marketing doesn't have to be guesswork. In fact, it shouldn’t be. If you are willing to embrace new methods and technologies, you can transform your approach, your results, and your ROI. 

Next, discover how to get more power out of your marketing stack.