Overcoming the 3 biggest barriers to measuring enterprise brand marketing

Regardless of industry, location or business size, leaders strive to find new ways to get ahead of the competition. In a digital world overloaded with billions of data points, every company wants to be “data-driven” and make informed decisions about their next steps. But in our newest report, based on a survey of 613 enterprise marketing professionals across industries, we found that 46% of marketers still struggle to measure campaign success.  

The complexity of multi-touch attribution makes it difficult for teams to measure the impact of marketing across separate stages of the funnel. This challenge is especially pronounced for brand marketers as they work to track metrics that on the surface may feel qualitative, such as brand sentiment or brand loyalty.  

Let’s take a closer look at the three most common measurement challenges brand marketers face and how some teams are using technology to become the data-driven organizations of their dreams. 

Proving results with limited resources 

Nearly half of brand marketers (48%) are unable to define metrics relevant to brand impact. This same percentage also feels they have limited access to comprehensive and reliable data. This means they’re trapped in a spiral: While they know that better data would help them measure success more effectively, they’re unsure which metrics matter most and are searching for a way out.  

The spring 2024 CMO Survey revealed that while marketing budget as a percentage of company revenue is on the decline, as a percentage of company profit, it’s on the rise. For better or worse, this tells us that marketing teams that can successfully prove results and help their companies grow are granted larger budgets. Achieving this is easier said than done. 

That’s why large and small teams alike are relying more on experts who can support their measurement efforts. These include social listening solutions to measure and analyze engagement and using that data as supplementary signals that inform both creative and investment decisions. It also extends to working with paid advertising and social experts to more effectively target audiences with relevant messaging.  

Creating alignment across internal teams 

Brand marketers recognize and understand the value of their work, but without proven results or clear KPIs, it becomes harder to gain internal support for their brand initiatives. Brand marketing work is an invaluable piece of reaching the 95% of B2B prospects who are not currently in the market for new solutions, but executives need to see measurable results. Misalignment between executives (e.g. owners, partners and C-level leaders) and non-executives means these marketing teams are afforded even less budget. Executives tend to prioritize addressing short-term metrics compared to non-executives (36% vs 26%) and are more focused on scalability of current brand marketing efforts (34% vs 24%).  

To close these gaps and improve internal alignment, teams have to strike a balance between short-term delivery and long-term strategy. In today’s economy, many businesses are repeating the mantra “do more with less,” so teams are searching for ways to adapt their existing tools to achieve both their short- and long-term goals.  

One solution we found to be consistent across nearly all enterprise brand marketers (92%) is LinkedIn and its Marketing Partner integrations. Companies can optimize their tech stacks by better connecting their existing tools. For example, by integrating with tools such as CRMs, brand teams can better understand customer patterns to reach prospects where they are, learn what types of ads draw them in and discover which leads are more likely to convert to deals. Solutions that can produce results for multiple teams across multiple channels can unite organizations toward common goals.   

Struggling to increase return on ad spend 

While brand perception may be challenging to measure, there are more quantifiable aspects of marketing that are slightly easier. Brand teams that use paid ads to attract leads are regularly working to measure, assess and optimize their return on ad spend (ROAS). Unfortunately, only 20% of marketers we surveyed reported a significant increase in their ROAS in the last year.  

If brand marketing teams are struggling to align with senior leaders, they may find a quick win by focusing on improving ROAS. Why? ROAS can be more clearly tracked and, with the right tools in place, easily correlate to improved conversion rates – and ultimately, dollars. 

The most successful teams at increasing their ROAS proved to be those using LinkedIn to design full-funnel, unified marketing and sales campaigns. These marketing and sales teams  supported this internal collaboration with LinkedIn to manage ads from the top of the funnel through to the bottom. Because of this, they were 2.7x more likely to report significant increases in ROAS than those who didn’t build fully integrated campaigns.  

Activating Sprinklr’s integration with LinkedIn helps teams even more clearly measure and execute this full-funnel marketing at scale. Social Advertising from Sprinklr Marketing enables the team to manage ad campaigns on LinkedIn in one place with automated approval workflows. With the ad management processes consolidated alongside other marketing work, Sprinklr can provide teams with live performance data. It also optimizes current campaigns, like it did for this major cloud service provider, with AI-powered Smart Bidding to control costs and further increase ROAS.    

Adopting new technologies to drive measurable brand marketing strategies 

When nearly half of marketing orgs today struggle to even define their KPIs, let alone access relevant data, it can make all the difference to build relationships with subject matter experts and choose solutions that are revenue drivers, not cost centers. To do this, brand marketing industry leaders look for ways to eliminate silos to better analyze and act on their data.  

LinkedIn remains a key place where marketers reach enterprise B2B prospects, and to get the most out of the platform, teams are integrating their LinkedIn brand campaigns with Sprinklr’s end-to-end social media campaign management capabilities. This allows them to build a more scalable global brand reach, improve brand governance, and gather even more data to build a stronger business. 

You can learn more about exactly how these teams are making this happen in our report:“Proving the Power of Brand: A Marketing Leader's Guide to Maximizing the Full-Funnel Impact of LinkedIn.” In this report, you’ll also find brand building trends broken down by industry and funnel stage as well as AI’s growing role in building and sustaining your brand.