If you're a marketer, you're surrounded by numbers. Website visitor counts, page views, video views, impressions and click-through rates are everyday currency to you, and are often the best way to understand the success -- or failure -- of specific elements of your programs. But when it comes to taking these numbers to your CEO, know this -- just because something can be counted, doesn't mean it counts.
In marketing, the journey is not the destination
If you're a traveler, you know that the journey is often as rewarding as your eventual destination. You can meet new people, have new experiences and see vistas you've never before seen. That way, when you get to your end point your reward is that much greater.
Legacy metrics measure tactics that apply to a specific stage of the buying cycle and can be measured on their own. They're the excellent burger you had at a roadhouse, the trucker who told great stories at a diner on Route 66, that time you saw the sun dipping into the ocean as you made your way to your Santa Barbara holiday.
But to a b-to-b marketer, they're just pieces of your account-based marketing machine. Each bit does its job, but it's the final result that matters.
Don't measure to the tactic, measure to the strategy
One key reason for account-based marketing's rise is that it provides a framework for measuring the impact of programs directly to the pipeline. Done the right way, you can bring together the impact of your programs at the account level. In that context, it is helpful to think of marketing metrics as a rising scale: