Testing the Effectiveness of Your Tech Marketing Strategy

by Cara Sloman, CEO, Force4 Technology Communications 

Business never stands still. Market forces from shifting customer behaviors and economic fluctuations to emerging technologies demand constant reassessment of your marketing strategies. Staying agile isn’t optional; it’s essential. 

Tech marketing leaders need clear, practical ways to measure whether their strategies are truly driving business results. Keep reading for straightforward, no-fluff methods to evaluate and optimize your marketing approach. 

Marketing mistakes to avoid 

Effective tech marketing stems from a deliberate match between business objectives, customer needs and the right timing. But marketers must be cautious so that they don’t end up misaligned with the sales team’s efforts or with what buyers are looking for. Avoid these common mistakes: 

• Making marketing plans based on theory – Campaigns may generate leads that the sales team can’t follow up on if your plans aren’t in sync with messaging, goals and how you’ll qualify leads. Strategies fail when they are based on assumption or the latest theory instead of on customer data and pain points.  

• Placing too much value on vanity metrics – Follower counts, impressions, “Contact us” leads and clicks provide only a glimpse of the whole picture; they don’t equal marketing success. Believing that they do results in a strategy that focuses on short-term visibility rather than long-term value. These metrics make for an impressive report slide but often just hide poor ROI. What you need to focus on are metrics like customer retention, conversions and pipeline growth. 

• Going after quick wins instead of playing the long game – Brand building over the long term is a better idea than producing multiple short-term campaigns. Viral stunts, promotions and one-off content pushes can’t replace consistent brand narrative, which builds trust and is essential for long-term success. 

• Too much automation in your “personalization” – Though automation enables scale, tech marketers often use generic messaging. Personalization is about more than adding the prospect’s name to an email. Failing to understand this can lead to erosion of trust. 

Focusing on customer behavior 

Effective marketing begins with the ability to deeply understand and track valuable customer behaviors such as progress in the purchasing journey and ongoing engagement – behaviors that lead to business goals. Examples include: 

• Taking part in user communities, inviting others or sharing your content 

• Viewing pricing pages, making direct inquiries or signing up for demos 

• Spending time with high-value content 

• Interacting more deeply over time  

A robust marketing strategy must be founded on clarity about how your customers behave, connecting authentically and relating behavior to intention and outcomes. To accomplish this, you’ll need smart data interpretation, integrated tools and ongoing refinement based on what’s working and what’s not. 

There’s more to marketing than click-through rates, which don’t reveal much about actual impact. Instead, pay attention to post-click behavior and conversion quality: 

• On landing pages, time on page and bounce rate 

• Conversion rate for high-value actions such as sign-ups or demos  

• Revenue or pipeline contribution per campaign 

• Conversion rate from lead to customer 

Credible tracking of marketing ROI 

Link your marketing efforts directly to revenue impact, acquiring new leads and customer lifetime value. When presenting results, you need to use business terms to communicate value, like profitability, efficiency and growth. 

First, connect campaigns to the sales pipeline to measure which ones drive real opportunities—not just lead volume. For instance, which media outlets are sending the most traffic to your website? Which article topics got the most clicks? The answers to such questions will show was your prospects care about and find valuable. Report on: 

• Revenue influenced by marketing (deals where marketing played a role after the lead stage) 

• Marketing-sourced pipeline (dollar value of deals begun via marketing) 

• Average deal size and win rates by content asset or campaign type  

Second, align marketing metrics with core business KPIs. For instance, in your annual plan, what are your annual recurring revenue (ARR) goals? Ensure your results are directly linked to your efforts to achieve them. Demonstrate how your marketing activities undergird key business goals such as: 

• Customer retention via lifecycle content and nurture 

• Improvement of lead quality and a shorter sales cycle, increasing sales efficiency 

• Higher deal volume and pipeline acceleration, which lead to revenue growth 

• Market expansion through reach and conversion in new regions or segments  

Make sure to incorporate financial metrics. Use actual financial data to measure ROI: cost per closed deal or cost per opportunity and campaign ROI (Revenue Attributed – Cost of Campaign)/Cost of Campaign. 

For your C-suite, make a marketing scorecard. Create an easy-to-understand, recurring report that correlates marketing with business outcomes. Use business language such as: 

• “Our email nurturing campaign increased the sales qualified lead (SQL) conversion rate by 10%” 

• “Marketing was responsible for 38% of Q1 pipeline growth”  

• “Through targeted account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, we influenced $4.2 million in revenue” 

Include the finance and sales teams from the beginning. Work with them to verify forecasting assumptions and attribution models. This will build credibility and ensure that all departments agree on what constitutes “value.” 

Toward more effective tech marketing 

Leaders who are responsible for approving the marketing budget want to see the ROI. In an environment of constant change, you’ll be well served by a solid marketing strategy. Refer to the best practices discussed above as you create or refine your plan. A strategy based on data and customer insights will empower you to demonstrate how your efforts are helping to achieve business goals.