Marketing KPIs for 2024: What to Expect, and How to Measure it

2024 Market and KPI Assumptions

B2B tech only. We work with B2B companies in niche tech industries with complex sales cycles, such as advanced manufacturing, optics and photonics, and automation. The key performance indicators (baseline and benchmark) data shared below are exclusive to those industries. This typically means:

• Complex sales cycles, from 2-6 months or longer
• Larger deal sizes, for example, $100,000 per customer in annual spend
• Multiple decision-makers 

Based on organic growth goals. KPIs are appropriate for companies looking to beat the CAGR and pick up a little market share, targeting double-digit growth.

Pursuing a performance marketing-based strategy.  Marketing leaders are focusing on performance marketing to address their biggest 2024 goal: revenue growth. This reflects recession fears from 2023. The shift is seen in spending more on digital and newer channels, reducing brand building, and focusing on less expensive channels. However, this strategy alone does not support KPIs like long-term ROI and full-funnel ROI.

Every company’s strategy and key performance indicators are different. Contact us for a data-driven look at your goals and targets.

Now, with those disclaimers out of the way, we are happy to share sample KPIs for advanced manufacturing and tech companies with a large deal size and a complex sales cycle.

Baseline and Benchmarks for Marketing KPIs

Revenue Growth:

• Expectation 15%
• Baseline 10%

The total US market slowed to 1.4% in Q1 of 2024, but it's expected to rise closer to 2% in 2025,  with inflation subsiding and possible interest rate cuts. 

Recurring Revenue and Customer Satisfaction:

• 80% recurring revenue

This may not be a blanket PO or a known product, but healthy companies in these sectors should be able to count on 80% of their prior year's revenue repeating from existing customers.

McKinsey research shows that companies that focus on the customer experience and have higher net promoter scores generate twice the revenue growth of companies with lagging net promoter scores.

This suggests a need to anticipate replacement revenue of 20% in your sales and marketing strategy. Seeing higher turnover? If you are not measuring customer satisfaction, 2024 is a good year to survey your customers and monitor the results over time. An annual, quarterly, post-transaction, or milestone NPS survey is an easy and helpful way to tune into your customers. 

Traffic:

• Ongoing: 20%, month over month
• Baseline: 15%

For companies increasing their digital strategy, launching a new website, or otherwise making a significant investment in overhauling their web presence, expect to double your traffic in a year as a baseline.

For those regularly engaged in inbound marketing, look for 20% to 30% growth this year. Watch for coming algorithm changes, and publish unique content regularly. We see differences in traffic between clients investing in their website and content and those who are keeping the status quo - it is a good time to steal market share.

Keep in mind that new AI algorithms like Google Overview will also affect what content gets traffic. This is an evolving area, so everyone should plan on updating and optimizing their website as they see the impact of search AI. 

Leads:

• Ongoing: 15%, month over month
• Baseline: 10%

Be clear in what you mean by lead. New contact? MQL? SQL? Ensure sales, marketing, and partners share the same definition and criteria.

Conversion:

• Traffic to Lead: 1.25% baseline
• Lead to Opportunity: 5%

Deal size, average cycle time, and many other metrics are worth measuring. Conduct a periodic deep dive, but a few forward-looking metrics belong on your dashboard.

Alternatives or additions to this KPI are:

• RFQs per month: easy to track, even if manual
• Quote win rate: under 33%, may require customer discovery. If your close rate is well over 50%, you may be underpricing.
• Deal size: what is the average deal size, and what is the trend?

Email Marketing

This metric needs revisiting this year, due to privacy changes that can cause a falsely inflated open rate. For marketing, the average open rate sits at 29.71%, but the click rate is at 2.3%. While email remains an effective medium, it will become harder to measure. Shift to a click rate or engagement metric and adjust your lead scoring accordingly.

Social Media

Two to three years ago, we would've argued that followers were a vanity metric and that it was most important to measure the percent of traffic from social media. It’s imperfect: LinkedIn traffic registers as direct traffic in many analytics platforms, but month over month, it’s a pretty good guide. Behaviors have changed, though: social media is driving engagement and sales without click-through to your website. Consider:

• Engagement metrics
• New followers/month: 1-2 a day, or 45/month

• A paid social campaign: grow your audience for future content

• Interactive content: engage with your buyers

Video

Video has become an increasingly popular tool for marketing, sales, and service. Social media has the highest ROI when sharing videos. Short-form videos and live streams are becoming more of a tool to showcase branding and create an interactive marketing strategy. YouTube has been an obvious choice but also consider TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

E-Commerce

B2B e-commerce is now rated the most effective sales channel. This, combined with digital self-serve channels, is winning market share for the companies utilizing it. 

Account-Based Marketing

20% of accounts targeted through ABM become a qualified sales opportunity.

If you have a target list of accounts, you should track some marketing KPIs specifically for those accounts. Consider things like the number of new contacts, engagement, and conversions for contacts within your accounts.

Other Metrics

AI search favors reviews and ratings, so this is a good time to check to make sure you have a Google business listing and solicit reviews. The same thing applies to Glassdoor—ask some employees to fill out a review. 

How to plan for your 2025 sales and marketing plan?

What’s to come next? It’s too early to say, but winning marketing strategies, customer personas, and the buyer's journey are changing rapidly. Now is the time to refresh your customer discovery, market analysis, and sales and marketing playbook. Book a meeting.