Speaker 0: Hello, MarDreaman. My name is Shannon Battenfeld. I’m with Sercante. I’m moderating today’s session. Uh, thank you for joining us. For those of you new to MarDreamin, welcome. And with that said, I’d like to introduce you to our speaker, Natasha Wheaton.

Speaker 1: Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for joining the session today. Marketing ROI reporting. It’s not so scary. I named this session a few months ago, I think, when I thought that Halloween would be top of mind, but for those of us in Philadelphia in particular with the World Series, that is that just seems like a distant memory now, but, um, the sentiment still remains. Uh, this talk is a, um, session to make reporting feel a little bit more accessible and talk about why that’s so important. So I’m gonna keep jumping through. Special thanks to the sponsors. Um, a little bit about me. I’ve been in the marketing operations space for over ten years and specifically with Pardot MCAE for, um, six plus years. I mean, it’s probably before then, but that’s sort of my rough figure. And, uh, specifically, I’ve been working within the clinical research industry at B2B companies for the past couple of years, um, where I’ve found a really great home and it’s a great community there. Oh, yeah. I just saw the comment, let’s go. I’m so excited. I wish tickets weren’t so expensive. Um, but, yeah, in my personal life, I guess I’m a baseball fan. I’m a fan, but especially right now, um, I’m based in Philadelphia and a pet parent to my three babies right there. And I love to cook and I love to play pickleball, uh, and volleyball. So that’s a little bit about me. Um, so I will jump in now. Um, when the speaker call came out for these sessions, I was thinking a lot about, uh, resources in my current role and in previous roles where ROI reporting, really any marketing meaningful marketing metric reporting felt really daunting and a little bit scary and, hence, the name. Um, because of kind of the the echoes and the the, um, buzzwords and everything out there, um, this is, like, my shoddy attempt at making a word cloud slide, but just when you’re on LinkedIn and you see the post and it’s like, you have to have X Y Z model for multi touch attribution. You need to know what channel everyone’s coming in from. It needs to be tagged completely perfectly. You need to move them along the right stages. It it always felt scary to me from the sense that, um, when I’m, you know, as a marketing manager, there’s a lot on our plates. So that’s that’s sort of the premise of this talk is to talk about when you have some challenges up against you, especially resource constraints, what’s how do we go about reporting and showing marketing’s impact to the business, which is ultimately the most important thing. Um, because and it’s you know, I want to make it feel accessible for any team even if you’re a team of one because most marketing teams, especially those teams of one, can’t report on everything everywhere all at once. We really we want to and there’s there’s tech vendors out there and there’s, um, you know, leaders at larger companies that might have the resources that are telling us that we we have to report on every touch point, for example. Um, but it it can feel really hard, and it there’s a lot there’s a lot of data points, um, now that we can track as marketers. But with those resource constraints, um, you know, what is the most valuable and what what are the things that we should focus on and and how do we actually just start somewhere and get consistent and and focus on those things, um, and feel confident in that. Um, and the one acronym that I think from the word cloud that should ring through is ROI. It’s something that, you know, practically speaking, everyone in the business is going to understand. They’re gonna understand that when you’re coming up with your dashboard, that’s proving marketing’s impact to the business and their return on the investment that they have made, the budget that they’ve been given. Everyone can kind of hear it and understand it. Oh, okay. This is ROI. This is this is I’m proving marketing’s impact, and I’m proving what business we have generated. Um, it doesn’t it kind of cuts through the clutter, um, of of all the other touch points that you you dive into when you’re pulling your hair out trying to figure out a problem and you look through all of the metrics or you’re trying to figure out where to put the next dollar. Like, those minor details, yeah, you have to sort of look at other things. But but ROI kinda cuts through the noise, and it is that way to gain credibility. Um, so that’s why that is the title of the of the presentation to kind of focus on that acronym and how to prove marketing’s ROI. So yeah. So I but but and I’ve I’ve kind of nodded towards some of these things earlier in the presentation. Um, you might be strapped for resources. I know that not every marketing team has a set of analysts that can work towards providing every touch point and every data point. So, um, this you know, you you’re a one person marketing ops team. You you have a lot going on. So what are where do you start? We have a limited budget, and there’s a lot of tech out there that that, um, that likely can really help in terms of, like, proving analytics, but you might not have the budget or the again, the resources to actually use that, like, attribution or, um, you know, yeah, attribution technology that is really expensive. You might not even have the resources to, um, optimize it. Um, or, you know, your leadership just doesn’t understand marketing, but this is perfect for that because we’re gonna really cut down the noise. And and part of this is thinking practically, having common sense about what the leadership is going to understand. I mean, it’s okay if they don’t know what what what some of those buzzwords were earlier. It’s okay. Like, we we’re gonna get them to understand marketing’s impact on the business because their confidence in us is is honestly more important than, um, tracking every little thing. Okay. So all of this is to say, despite some of these things, despite the challenges that we’re all up against and, um, limited resources, We do we have to start somewhere. So I’d say that’s the crux of this talk is is where do we start to, um, prove marketing’s impact to the business. Starting can sound hard. I mean, it sounded hard when I first started getting into marketing reporting. I was like, I absolutely I’d have no idea where to start, um, in terms of like actual reports and in terms of, like, providing actual, um, data upwards into the business. So like we like we do, we wanna start with our goals. And I think for the purpose of this talk, I know there’s there’s a lot of goals and goals vary per time period and per organization. But for the purpose of this talk, we’re really focusing on achieving these goals. We wanna gain trust within the organization, which has so many benefits to, you know, you’re reaping them. If you have the trust of your leadership and of your organization and you’re well respected, then you you have a lot of of wiggle room to do different and interesting things as a marketer. Obviously, we want to make better decisions with our marketing spend. Um, you know, we wanna we wanna be able to see some of the nitty gritty metrics to understand if a particular channel worked or not. And then the third one is kinda similar to the first one, but you wanna be able to confidently and very in a very straightforward way communicate with leadership, whether leadership to you is just your line manager or whether that’s the CEO or it’s the CMO. Um, so that’s for the purpose of this talk is, um, kind of the goals and where where I always keep my mind is like, okay. I want to gain trust. I wanna gain credibility so that we can get more budget, so we can do different things, so we can test different things out. Um, and, again, I think I’ve said the word practical a few times in this talk already, but I just can’t help but use it. I think I’m diving I’m kind of cutting out a few steps because of this talk the the length of this talk, but just jumping right into these are the three charts that you could start with in terms of, um, confidently and clearly communicating marketing’s impact to the business and return on investment. Number one, kind of like a leading indicator type of chart where you’re tracking qualified inbound leads only. Okay. I’m, like, kind of just I don’t wanna say the word ignoring because we’re not ignoring them. We are following up with them. We’re still doing our due diligence on warm leads, on leads that, um, could download or a LinkedIn, you know, download, um, or something that’s warm that has, like, they’re not raising their hand for us to contact them. But, like, truly qualified inbound leads week over week based on where the lead source is. And by source, I’m not necessarily referring to channel. I’m more so referring to, um, um, you know, did they come in through the website demo form? Did they come in through the live chat? Did they come in from an event, um, and they were very hot lead? Um, but week over week, look at that, and that’s kind of your leading indicator and leadership’s leading indicator that you’re still keeping the train running, and and this is really important. And I I’m passionate about this because I I worry when when I used to share with leadership, like, oh, oh, but look at look at these 75 that came in and they filled out our form on LinkedIn to view a webinar on demand. Like, that’s great, and we should know about that. We have to follow-up. But unless they’ve moved on to being a hot lead and they’ve actually expressed that they want us sales to reach out to them, I’m I’m just not including it in my starting somewhere scenario. I hope that makes sense. But that’s that’s the first one. And then the second one, um, number of opportunities generated by marketing activities, by stage. Um, I mean, I think this is a pretty common report, and I’m I’m referring to, like, direct direct, um, primary campaign source. I’m not talking about campaign influence, which, again, I think is a very valuable report. Um, but for this purpose, it’s it’s kind of like that direct, like, marketing generated, um, based on the primary campaign source on the opportunity record, which might take some manual work if your processes aren’t totally set up, but you can kind of evolve. This is, again, starting somewhere example. And then just that number of closed won opportunities. And this is um, this is frankly just a number and it’s it’s I’m gonna see on the next slide. I’ll just skip ahead to there for now. Like, on the dashboard that I I use daily, um, it’s really just a number. And you can drill down, of course, dig into that report, but it is to show the number. And then, you know, there’s I don’t have the screenshot here, but I’d also recommend adding in the dollar amount to that, um, you know, whatever the actual dollar amount was. Um, but this is the visualization of what we’re the last slide, um, you can see on the on the left that, um, the kind of qualified inbound marketing generated leads week over week. You’re gonna kinda get a sense of, like, what happened in week two. That’s, you know, your drill down moment. Um, that’s that’s really helpful for leadership too, and they can kind of see where we’ve been and where we’re going. And then the opportunities by stage in the middle there, um, and then the closed won. So I think this is an extremely simplified version of what your your the outcome of your dashboard in Salesforce will look like if you continue to grow it, but it is, again, where you a great practical place to start. But how how I see some in the comments, like, we don’t know all of our sources, um, which is which makes sense. Um, and it’s, yeah, it’s not easy. But I would say, yeah, as it sounds when I am up against that, it’s like there is sometimes some manual effort. And I think sometimes we don’t want to accept that or admit it at least, but, um, yeah, there’s sometimes there’s gonna be a manual effort where you actually have, you just have to drill down and go and look at every single opportunity. If it came in from the website, for example, and truly just like see what happened with the sales team in there, but that’s sort of side note tangent, but how, how, how, um, I think this is again, the simplified version, but it’s, you know, activate, um, customized campaigns, create a campaign, a lead form that’s on your website. Obviously, you’re gonna have different sources and various, like, integrations. Like, if it’s LinkedIn, you might need Zapier to connect it back to Pardot. Or if you’re on, um, you know, live chat, might have something separate. But, um, you know, create that the Pardot form ultimately would be the end goal to get it in there. And then Salesforce campaign reports, which that’s kind of the way in which you’d activate you’d be able to generate that first report in the last slide with campaign with campaign members type of reporting, um, as well as opportunity reports that really focus on the primary campaign source, um, and then training and explaining. Just training the sales team on when to update and populate and then explaining to leadership what’s going on. I mean, I put the whole lot of communication in there because, um, it does require everyone to be on the same page and understand what each thing means. Um, and that’s also why it is really hard to be a team of one or a small team because you have to have those conversations very often and people just, you know, it’s hard to um, get to that bottom line, um, every time. Any suggestion on how to dig and identify unknown sources? I think maybe it would need more context. I mean, are they sort of just showing showing up in your database, or you mean people that are still unknown to you? I think, um, um, if they’re still unknown to you, then I then that wouldn’t be really in this report anyway. But if they’ve come into your database, I would be I would I think I would need to know the specific example of why the source isn’t known because, um, they definitely should be. I mean, at a certain point, maybe it might take some time to get there. But if it’s coming in as a known prospect, I think a good goal is to at least have a lead source or a campaign association within Salesforce for every single lead. Okay. Oh, yeah. And then so this slide is what about the I and ROI? I haven’t really touched on kind of finding an automated way to say X campaign cost $5,000 and it yielded Y. And the reason for that is because, frankly, I don’t even do that anymore because of how marketing has evolved. And not that I’ve been in marketing for decades and decades or anything, but even in the last ten years, my the campaigns that I run, they’re scrappy. They have to be. They have to be human. They have to be personal. They’re they’re the sales I have the sales team going out and and various touch points, and I have you know, there’s a webinar and there’s a blog and there’s a white paper and there’s a case study and there’s a wide array of things and it’s people talking about it behind the scenes, and then they come into the website, and there is no source, for example. It’s just that’s the nature of marketing these days, and it’s it’s better that way. I mean, it’s a little bit more human, and, um, you’re getting your content out there. Um, but that was kind of a tangent just to come back to the slide and and say, in terms of um, calculating an actual ROI figure, the I I would look at your closed won opportunities and each source of those and compare it to your budget figure or your actuals figure for that campaign type. Or if you can drill down, you know, for an event, for an example, it it is a little bit like, it’s cut and dry. Um, and those are a little bit easier to show the impact and the exact figure. But you can find ways to, um, show the return on a true investment number and actually develop a figure. Um, I’m gonna click through to the next one and kind of get back to the end just so that, um, can answer a little bit of questions. Um, and, you know, this slide is really just here to address and acknowledge that there’s a lot missing from this. There is there’s so much that, um, we can do when it comes to marketing analytics reporting, but it’s this is meant to be a starting place and to remind you that your leadership cares about consistent reporting and positive movement towards impacting the business’s bottom line. And I think we all know that, but that’s what they care about. And and sometimes we don’t need to get so complicated with it. We really just need to, within the limits of what resources we have, need to be consistent and show a figure and and show that ongoing to to gain the trust within the organization. Um, so, yeah, that’s the last slide. Thanks again to the sponsors. Thank you to everyone here. Um, it’s all one quick question. Um, it’s a little slow. Okay. So sources.

Speaker 2: Hi, y’all. Hi.

Speaker 1: Any thoughts any thoughts on how you measure B2B closed won revenue when it moves through distribution and the automated moves through distribution and the automated tracking ends with the handoff to the distributor. I do not. I that’s interesting. I mean, it seems like a really industry specific question. I would assume you just have to get some kind of process in place to close the loop between your organization and the distributor. Yeah. That’s a that is a challenge. That’s a tricky one. I mean, you could agree kind of internally with your organization or your leadership that the point at which you pass off the distribution is marketing’s kind of, like, golden, um, step. Like, hey. This is the challenge that we’re having. And then, you know, in the meantime, in the interim and maybe with that end goal of, like, closing the loop. Yeah. Start small. Yeah. That’s definitely what I was thinking. Like, start small and make sure that it’s accurate instead of having tons of dashboards. Yeah. And you can grow grow from there for sure. Um, any suggestions? Oh, we already did that one. I think that’s all of them.

Speaker 2: I have one more Q and A question. Actually, I can put it up on the screen. Um, I just have to share my screen. Okay.

Speaker 1: I’ll stop sharing.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me go ahead and share. Alright. How do you set the primary campaign source on the opportunity?

Speaker 1: Oh, um, so me, personally, I think there’s a few ways. So within I think it’s if you have campaign influence enabled or maybe it’s honestly already out of the box this way. Don’t quote me. But, um, if you if, you know, Pardot kind of identifies that first touch point. So if it’s like a web lead, like, they came in through a demo request or a pricing request, those are forms that are set up for me, um, right within Pardot, and, um, a few of my Zapier connections are set up that way too. That that’s the first campaign that they’ve interacted with. So it’s I think it’s Pardot First Campaign Association. Please don’t quote me. That’s a little rusty. But when I convert the lead into contact and create an opportunity upon conversion, it actually does auto populate. But, frankly and I I it’s not ideal, but I sometimes sales will create the campaign. And and they know the process, but they don’t always follow through. So I’m looking at almost every opportunity, um, that has activity related to a contact that’s coming through a campaign, and I’m adjusting it manually if necessary. It’s, like, top priority weekly. I hope that answers the question.

Speaker 2: One more here. If you if your lead object and if if you leave object and convert lead, it will pass through not reaching out. So let’s say that was a response. Is that right?

Speaker 1: Ah, thank you. Wait. If you if you lead object and convert yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I would I would, like, note that in my implementation of Pardot, I, um, like, I have anyway, this is nuance, but I have a campaign that sometimes triggers as the first campaign because it’s them visiting the website makes sense, and sometimes it populates with that. But I would rather it be there more, like, substantial campaign campaign. So I’m all for the manual checks of that one at least. Perfect. Thank you everybody for your help in answering that one.

Speaker 2: Awesome. Alright. So are there any other questions? Oh, we’ve got another one in here. One second. We got some time. I’ll go ahead and share this. Let’s see. Oops. Sorry, y’all. Let’s see.

Speaker 1: I think, um, in terms of, like, best way to capture last touch ROI, it I would leverage, um, Salesforce and Pardot’s, um, campaign influence and attribution models. They’re they’re good. I mean, they work. They’re just I I struggle with them in my current organization, and I’ve struggled with them in the past in smaller marketing teams merely for the fact that it’s, uh, like, certain sources don’t carry all the way through, and certain data doesn’t carry through exactly, like, perfectly the way I want. And then I find myself in leadership meetings going, oh, well, that’s something we’re working on. Um, I I’m getting the source figured out, and it’s that’s not what they wanna hear. So I’ve been really focused on just, like, very consistent and straightforward. Everyone understands reporting, and and that’s gonna evolve. But, yeah, best way to capture your last touch ROI. I would recommend, um, the out of the box or might not be out of the box, but I know that, um, you know, as long as you have campaign influence 2.0, um, turned on that you have, you will have access to some of the, um, or you will have access to kind of their default models, which includes less touch.

Speaker 2: Any other questions? Alright. Thank you guys all so much for for joining us today. Um, got about three minutes left. So if there’s no more questions, we’ll go ahead and wrap up. But, again, a very special thank you to all of our sponsors and our speakers. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much, Natasha. That was incredible. And

Speaker 1: Thanks, everybody. Go, Phillies. Bye.