Show Me the Leads!

Providing mechanisms to measure results has traditionally been a bane of marketing and public relations departments and agencies. Managers and salespeople alike demand proof that investments in marketing are paying off.

“Show us the leads,” they say.

And Omniture and Salesforce are trying to do just that for the business-to-business marketplace.

In North America, B2B firms spend about $80 billion on marketing, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Yet many do not have a clear idea as to how effective that spending really is in generating sales. Current tools simply track how leads are captured and then the documentation process drops off.

The integration of Ominture’s SiteCatalyst and the Salesforce.com CRM system will allow B2B marketers to have, on a real-time basis, more detailed information about customer behavior and response to specific campaigns. Basically, all customer touch-points can be recorded, providing the entire picture as to how a lead was captured and, more importantly, detailed information about how the lead was subsequently won. This will enable marketers to more effectively tailor marketing campaigns to have a bigger impact on sales.

Will this spur the end of the Marketing vs. Sales battle? Probably not. But it will be better at giving credit where credit is due. And both sides will benefit from value-added information to better steer efforts.

CBR Online Coverage of story (Link)

Ominture’s website (Link)

Salesforce.com (Link)