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While MQLs are still an incredibly important metric to gauge the success of marketing, particularly demand generation, a relentless focus on driving them, particularly at the expense of other marketing efforts, should be avoided. After all, while generating demand (and pipeline) is important, it really only matters if that actually turns into closed deals. With that in mind, technology marketers should focus on three other metrics in addition to MQLs including:
-- > MQL to Closed Deal Conversion Rates- Marketers often look at the conversion rates for each stage of the sales funnel, but it’s ultimately this metric that matters; If more MQLs lead to lower conversion rates, it’s critical for marketing to also focus its efforts lower down in the funnel to enable the field to close more deals
-- > Competitive Win Rates- With a finite number of potential buyers, beating the most common competitors more than they beat you is critical to long-term success; Understanding competitive win rates (and setting higher goals) will help ensure that the campaigns (and enablement efforts) are designed to highlight differentiation between you and those competitors.
-- > Customer Retention and Revenue Growth- As I noted here, customer marketing is an area that will be a key part of our research agenda in 2014; While a majority of marketing is to prospects instead of existing customers, the easiest way to avoid the MQL trap is to grow annual revenue and lifetime value of the customer base
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