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13 Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track

Author: Ciente Editorial Team

Sales-Pipeline-Metrics-to-Track
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13 Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track

13 Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track

Weaknesses in your sales pipeline are detrimental. Can the right sales pipeline metrics help elevate the buyer’s journey?

Numbers and data, when isolated from each other, are meaningless. They exist within specific contexts.

We turn them into a quantifiable metric by tracking, analyzing, and comparing them to churn out meaning. This is how metrics help us gauge the effectiveness of a method.

Across the marketing and sales landscape, metrics help us assess and measure performance or production. It quantifies your marketing efforts to measure their effectiveness in boosting conversion rates and lead sales velocity.

Sales pipeline metrics operate in the same manner.

Sales pipeline: The basic understanding.

Sales pipeline is a visual representation of how your prospects move through the different stages in the funnel, i.e., from initial contact to closing a deal. Simply put, it helps analyze the overall buyer journey – what’s causing the drop-offs or why it’s taking so long to close a deal.

Sales pipelines are unique for every business and industry. What it generally looks like depends on the buyer’s journey, depending on their interests, preferences, priorities, and research.

Each buyer moves distinctly to accommodate the pipeline according to their journey, i.e., personalizing and making it effective. More than being sturdy, the pipeline is elastic and adapts to the prospective movements.

It generally includes three processes: lead generation, lead nurturing, and deal closing.

And, these are broader stages covered within the sales pipeline:

Prospecting ⇒ Lead qualification ⇒ Initial contact ⇒ Official proposal ⇒ Negotiation ⇒ Closing the deal

The most crucial objective here is that the pipeline should be able to handle the volume of leads without compromising the engagement quality or performance. If your brand is witnessing low conversion rates, certain challenges within your pipeline should be addressed.

Some of the common challenges your sales and marketing team may encounter include:

  • Lack of historical data on closed deals
  • Off-market target audience guiding leads off-base
  • Absence of measurable targets
  • Lack of visibility or knowledge regarding the status of the sales pipeline
  • No use of effective CRM tools to track leads
  • Not following up on cold leads
  • Inadequate conversion status updates
  • Neglected workable and high-quality leads

These are the potential weak spots of your sales pipeline.

So, how do we overcome them?

The Importance of Sales Pipeline Metrics in Driving Success

Certain metrics let us assess how to alleviate these concerns and improve the different stages across the sales journey.

Pipeline metrics are crucial.

Each team member should familiarize themselves with tracking them regularly. Even if the sales pipeline metrics vary for businesses, some general ones should still be tracked by your team.

Understanding what drives your prospects to close a deal in a win or what makes them drop off midway through these metrics also offers significant opportunities for improvement.

This is why choosing the relevant metrics takes precedence.

How can you choose the right sales pipeline metrics that align with your business goals?

1. Align metrics with the business goal you wish to achieve.

Don’t just track numbers; ensure that these numbers boost you closer to your business goals. This data, when siloed, doesn’t mean anything. But within the right context, they mark your progress towards your objectives.

For example, if your goal is to elevate the organization’s market share, then total revenue wouldn’t offer you the nuanced picture. Here, tracking the share of wallet and sales per territory makes more sense.

The crucial factor here is taking a granular approach. If you are dominating the market, how do you ensure that it remains ten years down the line?

2. Leverage a balanced approach.

Identifying bottlenecks is as vital as predicting the success of your sales strategies. To get a more molecular insight into where the lacks and gaps are most prevalent, you can’t just focus on certain metrics while dismissing the rest.

It’s true that the approach must revamp in today’s modern sales landscape. But traditionally relevant metrics take as much precedence as implementing new ones.

This means taking a balanced approach to choosing the right metrics.

Your strategic framework should entail a mix of lagging and leading indicators – one that demonstrates the past performance (closed deals) and ones that forecast (qualified leads).

A balance between them can help your marketing and sales teams to revisit, review, strategize, and analyze accurately.

3. Assess periodically and update your metrics.

One of the most strategic means of selecting the right sales pipeline metrics is assessing what’s working and what isn’t, and updating the list.

It’s crucial to start from somewhere. Each data point can give you the slightest idea into what your sales strategy needs to rework on.

What worked before might not work today. Don’t let the stale metrics prove your efforts ineffective. So, review them periodically to ascertain that they align with the current business challenges and requirements.

4. Get a comprehensive understanding of the entire customer journey.

Numbers wouldn’t always tell you where the rupture is. Most often, sales hit the wall while making a sale or post it.

This is because most only focus on pre-sale metrics and interactions. This damages the customer experience and leads to missed opportunities.

To avoid this, it’s necessary to track the customer experience, too. Metrics, such as sales cycle length, can offer you a 360-degree insight into what’s truly going wrong.

The bottom line?

The sales pipeline metrics you end up choosing must be actionable. If they aren’t, it poses a significant obstacle for you.

These metrics should illustrate a specific behavior – what is happening, what has changed, and what can be done about this.

The right sales metrics don’t merely offer postmortem pipeline analysis. They allow you to proactively make informed decisions and offer clarity into nuggets that often go unnoticed.

Don’t measure everything. Focus on those that align with your goals.

Fundamental sales pipeline metrics to amplify your efforts

Opportunities

The total number of opportunities matters because it portrays the results of your lead generation efforts. Your lead generation efforts should target prospects fitting the ICP, i.e., the ideal customer profile.

What factors qualify prospects as opportunities? There are some criteria that most businesses focus on.

  • Demographics – age, gender, income, family structure, education, occupation, etc.
  • Firmographics – company size, ownership, market share, location, sales cycle stage, financial performance, etc.
  • Psychographics – value proposition, goals, interests, lifestyle choices, etc.

A prospect does not have to follow each criterion, as they vary according to the organization.

To track this, teams must prioritize lead quality because it aptly demonstrates which leads are the most valuable and can easily convert into opportunities.

By analyzing which accounts you count as an opportunity, your team can optimize its marketing efforts and improve lead-nurturing processes to keep them engaged as they move through the pipeline.

How can we assess lead quality?

To simplify this, your sales team can use the BANT or MEDICC lead qualification framework.

The opportunities should be tracked and assessed weekly, monthly, or bimonthly, depending on the preferences of your company. However, it can also be done regularly in case of rapid market fluctuations, multiplying lead volumes, or during push season due to an event.

New Leads

The number of new leads entering your pipeline offers an overview of the success of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, it helps outline your brand’s market reach and offers quantifiable data to back your efforts.

It is necessary to highlight these new leads to establish whether your lead generation strategies are efficient.

Once in a while, we should question whether we are chasing hollow leads with no future potential and wasting our resources.

The end solution follows a comprehensive tracking system and establishes a timeframe depending on the pace and volume of generated leads. Document the number of leads, segment them, analyze the trends, and then compare the different lead-gen efforts to help optimize your strategies.

Overall, lead quality reflects your sales and marketing efforts – how effective they are. But it could largely differ from business size to industry to marketing strategies.

Hence, there’s nothing as simple as “good” or “bad” leads.

By documenting the acquired leads regularly against how many of them actually convert, the results will automatically indicate the performance of your strategies.

MQL to SQL Conversion Rates

This conversion rate calculates the number of marketing-qualified leads who convert into sales-qualified leads. They show interest, sign up, provide their contact info, and subscribe for a demo period to further inspect the solutions offered to them.

These metrics highlight the performance of your lead qualification strategies.

An effective lead-nurturing process will eventually illustrate high engagement results, which may translate to high conversion rates. This indicates a healthy alignment between the sales and marketing teams.

How often do we assess MQL to SQL conversion rates?

Calculate MQL to SQL conversion rates monthly. With this, you will allow the lead qualification processes to work at their own pace, enabling you to make adjustments and understand if they are returning the desired outcomes.

The acceptable range for this conversion rate depends on the industry, business objectives, and past performance – your MQL-SQL conversion rate benchmarks.

Lead Velocity Rate

Velocity measures whether an object is accelerating or decelerating. This applies to a sales pipeline. The lead velocity rate compares the leads generated in the current business period to the previous one.

The velocity rate calculates qualified leads, helping you analyze whether your lead-generation efforts are fruitful and effective. It aids in strategic resource allocation and sales processes, amplifying your efforts.

This metric is crucial to understanding your business revenue growth.

If the number of generated leads for the latest sales cycle remains similar or lower than the previous sales cycle, you know you’re doing something wrong. Thus, it should be assessed monthly or quarterly, depending on your company’s needs.

There is no acceptable velocity rate.

It depends on the industry and your business. Remember, you are your biggest competition.

In every sales cycle, the target should be to generate more leads through improved strategies compared to the previous one.

Average Deal Size

Average deal size is another significant factor that measures the health of your sales pipeline. It represents the monetary value ascribed to a sale.

Tracking the average deal size your business is partaking in helps with sales and demand forecasting.

In the long term, regularly tracking average deal sizes can assist in optimizing and streamlining strategies for marketing and sales initiatives. It is important to reach your brand targets and meet broader market conditions.

Sales Cycle Duration

Analyzing the monetary value of a sale is as significant as calculating the duration of the deal. This metric focuses on the details. It offers an insight into how a deal got stuck and why, with ways to improve it.

Sales cycle duration is the average time a deal spends at every specific stage of the sales cycle. Tracking minute errors resulting in potential delays is easier by calculating the sales cycle duration.

Additionally, this provides crucial insight into the sales cycle length, i.e., the time it takes from the initial contact to the lead being closed. This is also one of the sales pipeline metrics to track.

After all, this also affects the time a deal takes to close.

There are three metrics that we are addressing – average sales cycle duration, sales cycle length, and time taken to close.

These three metrics also help sales forecasting, so your brand can establish practical targets.

A long sales duration can cause a huddle in your pipeline, resulting in relatively high lost deals or drop-offs.

Both these metrics depend on diverse factors, such as the complexity of the product or service. The sales cycles across the B2B landscape are generally longer due to the several decision-makers in the buying committee. And this might delay the purchase as each of them holds their interests and pain points.

You should curate your marketing techniques based on your target market to overcome such hiccups.

  • Establish priority and build trust regarding the prospects.
  • Conduct customer research and feedback programs.
  • Provide social proof through value propositions that align with the prospect’s preferences and pain points.
  • Time-sensitive offers that urge prospects to take action.
  • Streamline and integrate your lead nurturing and sales enablement strategies to retarget interested leads and stay on their tail.

These sales pipeline KPIs are mutually dependent on each other to some extent. But their goal remains the same, i.e., measuring how efficiently your sales and marketing efforts convert leads into paying customers.

Number of Deals Won

This pipeline metric tracks the number of successful deals. This is relative to the total number of opportunities during a specific period.

Conversion rates are crucial to drive business growth.

The higher the conversion rates, the faster your business can attain its goals. This is why conversion rates are one of the most crucial sales metrics.

If the conversion rates are low or don’t align with industry benchmarks, you can outline fresher roadmaps by identifying the areas of improvement.

What factors contribute to a successful deal? What have you done differently to win a deal than the one dropped off?

These are the questions you ask your sales and marketing team while analyzing the conversion rates and other trends in your data.

Most often, the opportunities may be high, but the win rates are low, signifying a major lack in the closing stages of the pipeline.

Age of a Deal

This is one of the effective and simple metrics you can use when a deal is taking an unnecessarily long time to move through the pipeline, or the prospect themselves are taking too long to make a decision.

With an increasingly long decision-making period, it is less likely that a prospect converts.

You need to assess why the lead didn’t convert and where they got stuck.

How do you avoid this? – Identify the bottlenecks, remove them, and boost the sales velocity.

To move this forward, your company should equip the sales representatives with the right resources and sales enablement or acceleration tools to drive the purchasing process.

By accelerating the sales processes, the age of the deal will automatically reduce, offering space for more successful closes.

Sales Rep Activity

This metric offers insight into the sales team members’ sales performance. Measuring this helps foster team productivity and takes team accountability.

It outlines how your sales team performs through outreach emails sent, the number of calls made, and the meetings booked by each sales representative. Track the sales and categorize them based on factors such as rep, team, region, product/service(s), etc. using efficient CRM tools.

Through the results, your team can assess whether the sales rep is compensated for their contributions. And once analyzed, underperformers can be equipped with more resources and support from their superiors.

How do you improve the number of top performers, boost sales rep activity, and amplify sales?

The lack of correct skills and knowledge is a huge obstacle. To improve this, offering regular training and coaching sessions to newbies is a way to go.

The training should include actively engaging with prospects and staying updated with industry trends. Actively assessing and improving individual sales per rep will help boost the sales team’s productivity.

Total Pipeline Value

This sales pipeline metric measures the total value of deals in your pipeline. The total pipeline value depends on the value of the sales opportunity, the pipeline stage, and the time taken to close it.

By tracking the value of the current opportunity, it is possible to measure the total forecasted business revenue. Hence, it is a valuable metric for sales forecasting.

If you compare your total pipeline value with your win rates, it can help you forecast how much sales revenue could be generated at the end of the sales cycle. If combined with the sales cycle length, it can help analyze the total revenue potential.

To calculate TPV, each opportunity is provided with a specific monetary value, helping to estimate the total sales amount.

Customer Churn Rate

Also known as the customer turnover rate, it’s the number of customers you’re losing or drop-off from the purchasing journey.

This can be quite a requisite KPI for businesses, as it indicates customers are losing interest in your product or service.

However, this might not be the actual case.

Drop-off rates are as important as win rates. It becomes difficult to identify the improvement areas without highlighting the weak points.

Customer churn rate is a necessary metric in subscription business models.

It calculates the customer percentage that doesn’t renew and cancels their subscription services within a month or a year. Hence, this pipeline metric is significant for companies that rely on a recurring pricing model like SaaS or subscription services.

Implement CRM tools to determine how to boost the workings of your subscription models. And highlight the number of paying customers currently compared to the beginning.

⇒ Customer churn rate formula = (the number of customers lost/total customers at the beginning of the period) *100

For the broader picture, the customer churn rate helps highlight the forecasted revenue, improve customer loyalty, prioritize customer success, and enhance marketing strategies.

Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost signifies the company’s expenditure on acquiring new customers. It includes marketing and sales expenses, salaries, overheads, commissions, bonuses, etc.

However, CAC in marketing implies something different.

The main expenses entail the content, training, software, and other overhead costs. The goal is to prioritize investments that generate regular returns with minimum maintenance costs, such as curating content-specific blog posts.

It helps you assess the profitability, i.e., the amount you spend on a customer compared to the profit you make from selling your services to the customer.

This metric helps with resource allocation, making your customer acquisition process efficient and simpler. Simply put, there is no significant need to focus too long on this process. Sometimes, an expensive customer might not mean that they are equally profitable.

Your sales and marketing teams should incorporate smart and streamlined strategies. An uncommonly high CAC might mean inefficiencies that require vigilance to enable long-term stability.

Remember to research your target audience. Host automated testing regularly to maximize your ROI using the existing customer acquisition efforts.

How can you calculate the customer acquisition cost?

First, add all the sales and marketing expenses. Then, divide this total by the number of new customers.

⇒ CAC = (sales expenses + marketing expenses)/total number of new customers

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

After spending an ample amount on your cost acquisition efforts, how do you assess whether it is profitable?

Through customer lifetime value.

This metric calculates the value the customer brings to your business, including the amount they spend on your services, their time as customers, and their purchase frequencies.

By taking individual CLV into account, you can analyze the value of your entire customer base. It will offer insight into how much effort you should spend on customer acquisition.

To enhance CLV, focus on customer retention.

Implement new customer service strategies promptly, addressing their concerns to build a strong professional relationship. When the customers are satisfied and happy, they are likely to remain loyal and purchase your services.

The most significant strategy for driving customer lifetime value is improving customer service, personalized recommendations, discount offers, user-friendly websites, etc.

So, finding a solution based on the metrics can help you improve your sales and marketing strategies. One of which would be to reduce the stages in the sales funnel that are unnecessarily time-consuming.

Now that we have listed the most significant and common sales pipeline KPIs, why is it important to track the right pipeline metrics?

Because even the slightest mistakes can render their efforts ineffective, hampering the ROI, and congesting the pipeline.

Fundamental mistakes teams make while tracking sales pipeline metrics

We’ve established that the right sales pipeline metrics go beyond conversion rates and total revenue. The actual challenge lies in aligning the metrics with business needs and the growth stage.

A majority of teams overlook the nuances, leading to a conundrum. This creates obvious mistakes that fester, especially due to a significant knowledge gap.

What are some of the fundamental ones?

  • Isolated focus on vanity metrics: Even today, businesses continue to prioritize numbers that look good in theory but don’t represent the actual performance. This could create a false sense of progress, while deeper performance issues remain overlooked. And even mislead or confuse the stakeholders.
  • Misaligned or irrelevant metrics: Most teams don’t take the time to understand the broader objectives and how they align with sales performance. This can easily derail your focus, not making any significant contributions to your business’s current priorities. And SDRs might end up pushing low-margin deals, delaying crucial shifts.
  • Overlooking the context: It’s context that takes precedence over raw numbers. Metrics should be segmented by channel type, customer profiles, etc., to spotlight performance gaps. An inaccurate picture can lead to strategies that only work for a specific segment. Marketing and sales must fine-tune their approach accordingly.

Each of the above mistakes can have a compounding effect while tracking your sales pipeline metrics. They distort the overall assessment that impacts how the resources are allocated and how strategies are executed.

But there’s an antidote: intentional, agile, and goal-aligned metrics that align with the evolving sales and growth model.

A healthy sales pipeline is like a cocktail glass.

Jeff Hoffman, an entrepreneur and sales executive, argues that a sales pipeline is a cocktail glass rather than a funnel, stating that the latter is inaccurate. Most prospect drop-offs happen near the top in the first stage when the lead comes across a demo, trial, or sign-up.

After passing through this milestone, the opportunity pool should remain approximately the same, and the probability that the opportunity is won is highly likely. This is the make-up of a healthy sales pipeline.

To some extent, we may think about how the shape of the sales pipeline aligns with reality.

The stages and shape of this movement vary according to the buyers, industry, and sales processes.

Why is sales pipeline analysis crucial? To optimize your sales performance, client experience, and drive business growth.

Maintaining a simple and efficient sales pipeline is healthy for your business and sales revenue. But how do we know what “healthy” looks like?

FAQs

1. How can you effectively assess your sales pipeline?

A. Assessing your sales pipeline isn’t about counting closed deals or appointments booked. It’s about deal velocity and step-by-step conversion rate, among others.

To effectively assess its health, your teams must dive into comprehensive reports to spotlight bottlenecks and performance gaps. And segregate the metrics’ analysis by deal type or client profiles, or lead source, etc., to identify hidden ruptures.

2. What are sales pipeline metrics?

A. Sales pipeline metrics are qualitative and quantitative values that track the number and quality of created opportunities. These are crucial to demonstrate the health of your sales pipeline – whether your sales strategies are bearing the desired outcomes.

The common metrics are pipeline value, customer acquisition cost, customer churn rate, deal age, number of deals won, etc. A mix of both lagging and leading metrics provides a curious insight into what’s happening and the revenue potential.

3. How can you track sales pipeline metrics?

A. Generally, sales pipeline metrics can be tracked through your CRM systems through detailed reports and comprehensive dashboards. Your focus should be directed towards updating the deal progression, individual sales rep performance, sales cycle length, etc, ones that actually align with your core business goals.

Regularly tracking these metrics can help you tweak your sales strategies to elevate their effectiveness. And improve revenue forecasting.

4. What benchmarks or industry standards should I compare my sales funnel metrics with?

Industry benchmarks such as a 25-30% win rate and a 3x pipeline coverage ratio can add an advantageous starting point for you. And one of the most relevant benchmarks to compare with is your organization’s historical data.

While focusing on the competitor can help you outline a strategic edge, prioritizing your internal metrics can highlight what needs tweaking, whether it’s cross-departmental alignment or an update in infrastructure.

5. What are the most common pitfalls businesses face in tracking sales funnel metrics?

One of the most common pitfalls is depending on inaccurate data that doesn’t offer any useful insights. They can be misleading for your teams as well as stakeholders. Additionally, most businesses make the mistake of tracking the wrong metrics, overlooking segmentation, or merely focusing on lagging metrics.

5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework - Ciente
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5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework

5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework

With an undefined sales strategy, reaching the critical mile may seem like an endless struggle. These 5 steps map out the route to closing more deals.

The success of your brand relies on a solid sales foundation. Without knowing the critical markers, it is hard to measure sales performance. The lack of a clearly defined sales strategy may be why 45% of surveyed sellers believe their biggest challenge is incomplete data. When your sales team follows a system, it allows them to take the right actions at the right time. The 5-step sales process is a structure to improve the efficiency of your closed deals. It is a guideline to ensure that you are on track and open to tweaking your sales approach.

While the sales approach requires tailoring as per your product or services, the five-step sales process lays a strong foundation to get the pipeline moving. Your sales team can utilize this linear approach to move through each step efficiently. These sales steps allow you to seamlessly monitor the performance and identify gaps that require improvement.  

Mastering this framework makes it easier to tweak or modify your sales process strategy in alignment with your goals and the client’s needs.

Step 1: Prospecting

Prospecting involves developing a list of prospects likely to convert into paying accounts. This step has everything to do with researching potential leads and knowing them as much as possible. Understanding the target niche is the stepping stone to drive a sales strategy that yields the results. Focus on your ICP instead of randomly targeting a pool of audience and going nowhere in the journey.

Step 2. Connecting with the customers

Ace the first impression with your target audience. While interacting with the prospects, work toward not making the conversation sales-y. The goal of this step is to transform from a generic call to schedule a first appointment that could potentially close a deal. So, setting the tone right is of utmost importance here.  Building a strong relationship with your client can go a long way.

Step 3: Identifying the pain points

Spend enough time figuring out the challenges of your target audience. You can begin by asking relevant questions to draw out the problem and understand how your offering could address the pain points. As you do your research, also find out their preferred solutions and whether they have budget constraints. Communicate your understanding of their problem and how your solution can help. When doing so, emphasize the winning points while at the same time not sounding too sales-centric.

Step 4: Sealing the Deal

Closing a deal involves a series of discussions and reasonings. As you move towards the final step, make sure you walk through the right questions. Talk about the details of your sales flow chart and be open to handling questions and client objections. Have a clear plan in place as to what you will do if the client objects or if they are not ready to commit yet. Such preparation will pave the way for overcoming roadblocks swiftly.

Step 5: Keeping up with the Follow-up

The journey doesn’t stop at signing a deal. Once you have closed a sale, make sure to follow up with the client. You need to make sure that the client receives the product/service as discussed and the whole experience simulates customer satisfaction. This small initiative can work in your favor, promoting brand loyalty. A happy client is likely to be loyal to your brand. At this stage, do not hesitate to ask for referrals to generate new leads.

Wrapping up

Sales are centered around fulfilling milestones. Every aspect of the sales cycle revolves around garnering the right clients, identifying their pain points, strengthening bonds with them, and offering an ideal solution. These 5 steps can be a real game-changer for your business, aligning with your vision and adding structure to an otherwise complex sales process. You gain clarity and can deliver the best solution to address the customer’s pain points.

Ultimate-Guide-to-Podcast-Advertising
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The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Advertising

The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Advertising

With advertisers keen to follow the trends, are podcast ads the ideal strategy to attract positive attention toward your brand?

Today, we can perform a single task in multiple ways due to the onset of AI and other technological advancements.

Remember newspaper advertisements? Feels like ancient history.

In this fast-paced digital era, we have conveniently moved to screens (at the cost of our eyesight!).

And if screens were not enough, humans have found another way to consume content – listening. As much as we run towards convenience and comfort in this modern age, our senses are at maximum capacity.

Making us believe that listening and not watching is more comfortable is a marketing tactic. Today, there are over 546.7 million podcast listeners worldwide in 2024.

Why have podcast become so common?

Podcasts mix education with audio entertainment to elevate your mindfulness while you continue with your daily tasks, propelling a significant transformation in the advertising landscape.

Yes, we do commonly associate advertisements with visuals. But how do you elevate your storytelling? By utilizing multiple formats to drive a niche and unfamiliar audience base.

How does advertising strategy work itself into podcasts? We will help you understand this.

Podcast Ads are an underrated but rapidly growing advertising front. They allow you to boost your brand awareness and establish trust when speaking to potential buyers.

In 2024, over $4.02 billion was spent on podcast ads.

These sponsored ads communicate through or during a podcast episode, an uncommon form of paid marketing.

You might wonder whether podcast advertising works the same as radio advertising. Yes, both advertising channels use digital audio ads delivered by the host and some personal experience with that product or service. Also, check Programmatic Advertising Strategies.

But podcast advertising is undeniably different from radio.

Radio ads reach a broad audience, are irrelevant to the content of the radio show, and may seem vaguely random. However, podcast ads centralize targeting. They are placed cautiously within an episode to reach a targeted audience for deeper engagement. The advertisement aligns with the contents of the podcast episode such that its placement seems natural.

In podcast advertising, the target is an interested audience. The only objective is to create purchasing intent.

According to Spotify 2024 Podcast Trends, over 45% of Gen-Z and millennials and 62% of total study respondents stated that they trust the promoted brand during a podcast due to the easy-going relationship the host shares with them. This resulted in talking and searching.

Podcasts take engagement one step further. They offer interactivity features such as polls, real-time Q/As, comment sections, anonymous stories and questions of the week sessions, video podcasts, etc., underscoring a personal and one-to-one relationship with the host.

Podcast advertising takes advantage of this easy-going mode of communication between the host and his audience.

Consider the most popular podcast platforms – Apple, YouTube, or Spotify. To listen to a podcast, users log into their accounts. Hence, advertisers gain in-depth insight into who is watching and listening to their content, guiding them toward curating more targeted ads.

Podcast Ad Types

Podcast ads are placed at an episode’s beginning, middle, or end.

As an advertiser, you have to consider where to place your ad. Placement is a significant component of advertising. The main objective of advertising is to boost your brand visibility and to help you how to market your brand.

How do you catch the attention of your audience? By providing them with a distraction-free environment.

The approaches you use – how – to place or insert an ad into a podcast episode decides the where. You can occupy the spot in an episode in two ways:

Baked-in Ads

This ad placement is permanent, added to the podcast audio file beforehand, appears anywhere within an episode, and is available as long as the episode is on the chosen platform.

Every unique listener hears the same ad. And, even when a new listener goes back to listen to an old episode, they can still hear the ad embedded within.

Dynamic Ads

This form of ad insertion is an ad placed in a chosen spot to reach a targeted audience.

Through dynamic ad insertion strategy, you can offer a better listening experience by personalizing the ad and ensuring that you help maximize the effectiveness of the client campaign.

Here, the ads stay updated because the older podcasts are embedded into new ads. When a listener reverts to an old podcast episode, they listen to the ads, monetizing the back catalogs.

Dynamic ads are inserted by matching the brand with the relevant episode across the category collections – inserting ads with the relevant podcast discussion topics.

Types of ads according to the placement

Following the ad insertion into a podcast, there are three types of ads according to the placement:

Pre-roll Ads

These are ads placed at the very beginning of a podcast episode.

While reading a novel, we rarely drop it in the beginning. We often DNF it as we cannot read beyond the middle mark.

Are placing ads at the beginning of a podcast effective? Most listeners hit play and linger near the device to listen to the episode, boosting the chances they hear the ad. Consequently, if the podcast listener is listening to one of their favorite podcast series, they might be inclined to let the ad play as it eventually leads them to the podcast audio.

Initially, listeners are more patient, so they remain concentrated on the ad content showcasing minimal interest in the services.

Mid-roll Ads

If the ads are banded together one after another at the beginning of the episode itself, your listeners could suffer from ad fatigue. As an advertiser, you place them strategically throughout the podcast episode, figuring out the perfect placement where the listener pays the maximum attention.

Mid-roll ads are placed in the middle of 10-minute or longer podcasts. Is this a lucrative spot?

When podcast listeners reach the middle mark of an episode, they are already engaged in a side activity like cooking or exercising. The strategy is that by being engrossed in a physical activity, they are less likely to pause the ad, allowing them to play through.

What a way to monetize our distractions!

Post-roll Ads

Post-roll ads witness the lowest possible audience.

Readers likely DNF a novel before they reach the second half. This also applies to podcasts.

Most listeners directly skip to the next episode before the current one ends. If this is the last episode of the podcast, they are also most likely to close the app before they have heard the last few words.

An ad placement may seem effective at the end of a podcast when the listeners are busy with another task, so they let the ending play. This is beneficial when the episode is the last one in the series or the next episode is yet to be published.

A risk you have to take!

We explore the three distinct ad formats after how to insert podcast ads in the different placements or spots.

One-size-fits-all is not the right approach here. You need to focus on ad delivery at this junction.

Podcast AD Formats

Which podcast ad format would generate the most interest and create a lasting impact on the audience?

Podcast AD Formats

Pre-Recorded Ads

These ads are also pre-produced or announcer-read, targeting a specific audience demographic.

They are commercial messages relayed to the audience by, generally, a voice-over artist and not the host themselves. These are pre-recorded audio ads by the advertiser beforehand and then offered to the podcast host to play during an episode.

They run for over 15 to 30 seconds and are insertable across different slots.

Pre-recorded ads are dynamically inserted into the podcast to target a specific audience.

A targeting campaign helps the advertisers decide which audience should hear the ad based on demographics, geographic location, campaign dates, podcast categories, etc.

Host-Read Sponsorships

Have you ever heard of a live-read during live podcast episodes? Let me break it down for you.

A brand offers the podcast host a messaging brief and also provides sponsorship for the specific episode. After this, the podcast host puts this brief into their own words, changing its tone and fine-tuning it into more native, authentic, and creative content.

They blend it into the contents seamlessly to make it seem more natural. A connected shift in the ad entails more engaged listening from the audience, lasting over 60 seconds to a couple of minutes. It makes the audience think the ad is just another part of the episode.

Host-read ads are commercialized, edited into editorial messages, and recorded by the host. The benefit of host-read ad sponsorships is an improved listening experience resulting in deeper engagement.

In sponsor ads, the priority is driving engagement by blending relevant ads with native podcast content.

Long-Form Branded Episodes or Series

What does branded mean? It entails a sense of loyalty and responsibility.

A brand that wants to advertise on your platform sends a promotional message curated themselves. This could be a branded segment, episode, or entire podcast series.

The focus here is to be non-intrusive and centralize the tonality and voice of the message. The promotional message blends into the editorial content – a middle ground between the advertisers and the podcast host.

One content should not overpower the other, so the curated organic content that resonates with listeners should align with the ad message.

It has to utilize the loyalty and trust built between the podcast host and their listeners. It feels like a personal recommendation from a close friend.

Podcast Ads tap into the parasocial relationship the audience builds with the host.

By engaging and being invested in specific content, the audience sometimes develops an on-sided emotional connection with influencers, celebrities, athletes, etc.

This is what podcast ads take advantage of. And this is something that they monetize on.

It has become commonplace for brands to deliver their products or services to the host so that their talk regarding the experiences is more sincere.

According to a survey by the Guardian, 51% of respondents had a positive ad experience while hearing it on a podcast and even intended to purchase it.

In podcast advertising, listeners learn something new about a brand. Its appealing and informative content attracts attention from prospects, boosting purchasing intent and improving your performance across the overall marketing board.

It is not only helpful in lead generation but also in expanding your audience demographics. Podcast ads target a unique audience pool that is younger and has moved away from consuming traditional broadcast media channels.

By targeting younger audiences through podcasts, advertisers can target other audience pools through TV and radio advertisements without worrying about duplicate content.

Another benefit of podcast ads is their ability to have a multiplier effect on different ad formats, increasing the effectiveness of an ad campaign by offering new information about the brand and improving the authenticity of the brand experience.

And when combined, visual cues make podcast ads more memorable, i.e., boost memory retention.

Due to its diverse benefits and creative freedom, podcast ads have become one of the most trusted mediums for advertisers.

YouGov Research backs this by stating that the majority of their research participants felt more deeply connected when they heard a voice, a crucial element in personalized communication.

Podcast ads combined with sponsorships are the ultimate gateway for businesses of all sizes to boost their brand awareness. The diverse targeting methods, such as interest targeting and first-party integration, help advertisers reach the right audience at the optimal time.

Every business has an ideal audience pool, and podcast advertising has made it possible for advertisers to reach them.

But now that you are aware of the benefits that podcast advertising holds, how can you advertise ads on a podcast, and what are the relevant pricing to do the same?

You can implement measures as an advertiser to advertise your ad on a podcast.

  • Decide the contents of your ad. What is your ad regarding, and what is its theme?
  • Curate your audio ads and offer the main talking points to the podcast team.
  • Look for the appropriate podcast. The relevant ad should blend with the native podcast. You may find the contact information of podcasters on social media and websites or reach out to the parent company.
  • Finalize the ad placement. Decide ad placement and insertion beforehand, and finalize the pricing structure for podcast advertising.

The cost of placing an ad depends on different factors, such as the audience reading your ad, the number of spots booked, podcast popularity, the ad length, placement, and overall campaign duration.

Podcasts levy a fixed fee or place a charge per 1000 listeners – the cost per mile (CPM). The industry benchmark for podcast advertising is $8 CPM for 30-second ads and $25 CPM for 60-second ads.

  • The period/duration for which the ad will remain in the podcast.
  • How do you know you have chosen the right podcast? Track your ROI through vanity URLs, surveys, promo codes, and pixel-based attribution.

Podcast Advertising Effectiveness

Podcast advertising can serve as a unique and underrated marketing platform. But how do we gauge its effectiveness?

Particular podcast ad metrics help outline whether your campaigns drive your business growth. Podcasts are a cookie-less audio medium measured through listens rather than clicks or scrolls.

First, for basics, you may track the number of unique listeners who listened to your podcast at least once, comprising streams and downloads.

Second, there are specific attribution requirements mentioned beforehand that you can effectively measure depending on the ad content and funnel structure:

  • Discount or promo codes: A unique redeemable promo code provided by the podcast host used during the checkout stage of the purchase. It helps track the number of purchases and the number of new buyers.
  • Pixel-based attribution: How do marketing channels that use content marketing measure the success of their strategies? Through downloads.

Track ad exposure and overall website activity, i.e., every user action. However, how do you track user activity and web traffic once the user activity is taking place offline? The ways to track post-download engagement are complicated and limited.

While the RSS feed makes podcast distribution, i.e., downloading, streaming, and subscription easier, it complicates tracking. The user activity (listening) takes place offline once the podcast is downloaded onto the listener’s device.

How do we track the web traffic then? Pixel-based attribution.

This podcast measurement technique uses the available user data point to match the listener’s unique identifier with the purchaser’s unique identifier even when online cookies are absent.

  • Surveys: In marketing and advertising, it is crucial to assess whether the channels are effective. It is not easy to analyze or anticipate the exposure, response, and effectiveness, hence, post-conversion surveys help outline the elements influencing the customer‘s decisions.
  • Vanity URLs: Vanity URLs are unique, easy to remember, and shorter versions of longer podcast links. It mentions where the link will guide the listeners.

It is as easy to assess podcast traffic as other digital media.

Podcast advertisers, to accurately and reliably, analyze the traffic depend on insights illustrating the delivery and outcome of the podcast such as impression, frequency, and reach.

Research states that podcast listeners show favorable consumer behavior due to the positivity exuded by podcast advertising.

Margaret Moe in “Podvertising: Podcast Listeners’ Advertising Attitudes, Consumer Actions, and Preference for Host-Read Ads” published in the Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies outlines how listeners engage, interact, and react to podcast ads, especially host-read ads.

The research outlines the correlation between podcast advertising attitudes, the authenticity of the host, and the preference for host-read ads. They prefer ads from regular contributors due to the authenticity and trust between them and their favorite podcast(er) host.

With a staggering increase in podcast listeners, advertisers can build more opportunities to nurture engaged listeners interested in listening to host-read ads and purchasing the services discussed.

Thought Leadership with A Demand Gen 1
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Thought Leadership with A Demand Gen Program

Thought Leadership with A Demand Gen Program

Authoritative and transparent content can instill trust in B2B audiences. Is integrating thought leadership with demand gen the best way to ensure this?

96% of executives assert that thought leadership helps them make insightful and informed business decisions, inspiring them to take action.

Previously, this type of content was generally flagged as a biased opinion rather than an informative insight.

But, with more and more business leaders consuming thought leadership content, organizations have taken further steps to integrate it into their content marketing strategies.

Over 75% of C-suite executives and decision-makers assert that thought leadership led them to learn more about a specific product or service, they were not even considering before.

Thought leadership content is original and valuable. It builds relevance and credibility between different executives, allowing them to collaborate and build recognition with each other.

This shows how important thought leadership is for demand generation. There are barely any requirements for references and citations, this content is evidence-based, making it reliable and authentic. It conveys what the thought leader stands for – who is the face of their brand. Similarly, thought leadership instills other thought leaders’ trust in your brand, establishing it as one of the most advantageous demand-gen strategies.

Demand generation strategy is driving your B2B conversion rates.

It is a marketing tactic that builds brand awareness for your business and generates interest to acquire a maximum number of high-quality leads. Demand gen helps you find, learn more about, and nurture leads by making them realize your services can solve their problem. This is how marketers generate interest and demand.

Most often, your business taps into a niche market and offers solutions to prospective clients. For this to work, the brand awareness strategy should be reliable and optimistic. If the awareness strategy is effective, it helps educate potential clients regarding your business, persuading them that your solutions and offers are genuine.

How can your clients trust you while increasing their reliability on your solutions? By crafting a compelling demand-generation strategy.

It should be authoritative. Your content should establish your industry expertise, i.e., highlight your authority in the chosen field or the subject matter.

This is where thought leadership steps in.

The thought leadership goal is to sound like an expert and establish yourself as one to prospective clients. It is a common but advantageous tactic used by content marketers to prove their credibility and themselves as leaders across the industry. Through thought leadership content that is educational and helpful, your brand shows that it’s an active participant across the chosen industrial domain.

In simpler terms, you have to illustrate that your brand is helpful, i.e., one that a customer turns towards for solutions or expertise in a distinct subject matter. Hence, educating and guiding the customers are the necessary functionalities of thought leadership. You generate new leads, initiate proof of your expertise, and boost engagement across socials through this content type.

Thought leadership content has helped drive demand and revenue – the two asks of the competitive and fast-paced marketing world.

It has assisted in bridging the gap between the expectations of the audiences and those creating the content. Something that traditional marketing tactics have failed to do.

When marketing teams allocate resources to implement their strategies, they should allocate time for mapping approaches that build trust and loyalty. When personal brands of thought leaders overlap with their professional experience, the value of the business also strengthens.

Here are the different ways in which integrating thought leadership with demand gen can prove effective for your brand –

thought leadership

Call-To-Actions (CTAs)

Call-to-actions guide prospects or users in taking the next step across the demand gen funnel, constituting awareness (TOFU), consideration (MOFU), and conversion (BOFU).

Your brand has already established itself as the thought leader. But through carefully placed call-to-actions (in blogs, podcasts, and emails), you urge the prospects towards the problem-solving step by implementing a smart demand gen strategy.

This could include asking them to sign up for weekly newsletters, downloading whitepapers & resources, and registering for webinars.

A strong CTA in a strategic and well-thought-out position convinces the leads to take action by telling them what to do next and guiding them through the decision-making process. When the prospects undergo a less exhaustive and complicated process (by hand holding them through the demand gen funnel), they are more likely to purchase, boosting the conversion rate. The trip through the funnel – from awareness to purchase – becomes hassle-free.

By providing their contact information, the clients have already moved to the next step of the tunnel, meanwhile, for marketers, acquiring leads becomes straightforward.

Lead Magnets

Marketing teams use lead magnets to create SQLs. They offer free resources or trial periods to collect the leads’ contact information.

This is how gated contents also work. Controlled access has become the new axiom of businesses. Remember that this type of content doesn’t contribute towards brand awareness or visibility because hidden content doesn’t drive traffic. It serves a different purpose.

The gated content should be valuable and informative, enabling users to provide their contact information in exchange. These should include topics that specifically resonate with the target audience and address their pain points.

When a prospect clicks on a CTA to avail of gated content, they are redirected to a landing page that has to be strong and provide value, like an eBook or a whitepaper. Meanwhile, the landing page includes a form before you access the content. This form should have clear instructions and be straightforward and user-friendly, allowing a simple user experience.

It is easier to receive the user’s email addresses and contact information, helping segment the accounts for effective email marketing campaigns.

This marketing method eventually helps marketing-qualified leads convert to sales-qualified leads efficiently, boosting the lead nurturing process.

Nurture Campaigns

Content has become one of the most sought-after tools in this fast-paced digital marketing era. It has helped generate demand, nurture leads, and convert them efficiently.

Following this, your brand can offer expertise and valuable insights, boosting engagement and increasing conversion rates through high-quality thought leadership content. The goal is to turn the cold leads into hot ones who will eventually make a purchase.

Thought leadership content can help your brand build this credibility and make it the go-to resource across a niche market. When prospective clients face a marketing challenge, you should be their primary solution provider.

Miscellaneous Content Formats

One of the top goals of integrating a demand gen strategy with thought leadership is to drive engagement. And diversifying your content formats is one way to achieve this. It may range from blogs, landing pages, podcasts, infographics to eBooks, whitepapers, and interviews.

This includes valuable, insightful, informative, and relevant content that taps into a niche market, helping situate your brand as the authority. On a broader scale, it should address complex issues in a specific domain.

Take marketing as an example. The iterated content should establish a correlation between the marketing challenges and your branding solutions. Ensuring subtlety in this regard will emphasize the professionalism that industry experts often exude.

Market your brand instead of selling it!

Take podcasts for example. This form of content has a longer shelf-life. They are easily accessible to visitors and offer an expansive library of valuable content that educates. When you target a niche market, thought leadership through a podcast can offer a deeper insight into complex topics, turning it into memorable and shareable content in solutions.

Sharing snippets from a podcast episode works as an interesting demand-gen strategy. They instill interest and drive the traffic towards the podcast or the associated landing page.

Content such as podcast series makes the target audience receptive to offers, establishing authenticity through expert opinions. This discussion type provides a humanistic tone, making the listeners believe that the speakers speak from years of experience rather than following a script.

Quality thought leadership content is an effective way to attract high-quality leads.

So, thought leadership pieces should focus less on the organization itself and more on the audience meeting their preferences.

Omnichannel Promotions and Campaigns

Promoting through different marketing platforms boosts visibility and drives traffic. When the content is published on these platforms, including social media, new audiences might gravitate towards it, depending on how much it resonates with them.

This strategy is one of the crucial ways the marketing team can use to reach the prospects effectively. It assists in generating leads, allowing you to track the performance of each channel individually.

However, different channels lack consistent and cohesive brand experience. Here, you may pair the thought leadership pieces with the right channel, depending on its format, size, and length.

For example, when you post a small LinkedIn caption interlinking other content published by your brand, those interested might tap on ‘learn more’, taking them to the podcast or the landing page. This boosts your website traffic along with your brand awareness.

However, the bottom line is that regardless of the platform you post your content on, it should carry a consistent expert tone and voice. It should seem like an extension of a brand and not sound like an altogether different brand.

Uniformity remains the key to successful marketing campaigns.

Thought leadership can help market your knowledge to the audience, interest invested prospects, and establish brand value.

Demand gen is educational and informative, benefitting your brand for the long term. It offers you the bigger picture – instituting you as the thought leader and amplifying your brand reach to a bigger audience. Collaborating with other industry experts will allow your brand to create a network driving demand generation.

This unique collaboration between thought leadership and demand gen aims to magnify your impact, broaden your reach, and amplify your brand voice. Lead generation remains crucial, but we often forget the significance of demand generation.

Integrating demand gen with thought leadership has only propelled its importance further. Through compelling content, such as podcast appearances and guest blogs, thought leadership puts forth a unique perspective available on an established platform.

Today, thought leadership makes efficient use of digital marketing platforms to reach fresh audiences, build a loyal following, and drive demand gen while serving the main purpose, i.e., establishing authority.

In the fast-paced digital scape, marketers use thought leadership as a strategic tool to generate revenue, demand, and lead. Therefore, none can argue that thought leadership has elevated demand gen.

Thought leadership with a demand gen program has a transformative impact on your brand and your audience. By embracing this marketing strategy, you allow trust, innovation, and credibility to seep in.

Every content educates your readers but thought leadership content transforms your brand into an indispensable resource.

If, as a developing business, you wish to cultivate a loyal following, aligning thought leadership with demand-gen goals will help solidify trust in your expertise.

B2B SaaS Contract Management Software For 2025
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Trending B2B SaaS Contract Management Software for 2025

Trending B2B SaaS Contract Management Software for 2025

Gone are the days of manually managing contracts. Global businesses are digitizing and it’s time for your contract management system to revolutionize too.

The practice of storing documents in shared folders, employee inboxes, and email threads is traditional and seemingly backdated. Manual contract management is not only tedious but also prone to a series of errors and delays. What’s worse— important documents like these may get lost among the piled-up files. Such chaos is a shout-out for change.

With the world soaking in emerging technologies, it’s time to resort to software solutions. SaaS contract management software not only safeguards essential materials, but also prevents an important file from getting lost in the clutter. The software is designed to enhance the efficacy of your brand’s contract management system. With this technology in place, managing business contracts is far simplified. From negotiating contracts to signing and renewal, all phases are systemized and available in a single centralized location

Why Integrate B2B SaaS Contract Management Software

There are several pros of leaving behind the traditional practices of manual contract management and choosing a SaaS tool instead. Let’s walk through the list.

Cost-efficient

Besides convenience, SaaS software solutions offer a comprehensive overview of pricing, terms, and usage data. Analyze usage patterns to identify underutilized features or redundant licenses and use this data to renegotiate contract terms with vendors and optimize costs.

Centralized management

As and when business expands, so does the list of contracts. And if you don’t organize them, retrieving the data during audits or renewals would get chaotic. Utilizing SaaS contract management allows you to keep all data in one location and categorize them, promoting seamless data access. Moreover, they also have built-in automated reminders that do not let you miss any renewal or assigned tasks.

Contract review

Irrespective of a growing contract databank, reviewing every document is crucial for adhering to quality standards. It becomes easier to mitigate risks associated with manual processes, keep errors to a bare minimum, and comply with legal requirements while monitoring access controls.

Prevent auto-renewals

Some auto-renewals are unnecessary and could be quite frustrating. SaaS software promotes renewal tracking and alerts you well before the renewal date. This gives you enough time to decide whether you continue the contract or stop the renewal.

How B2B SAAS Contract Management Operates

B2B SaaS contract management system plays the role of your behind-the-scenes assistant. You can let it handle the series of complex components involved in managing these files. They get automated and hardly consume your time. Here’s what’s behind the seamless functioning of the software:

Contract creation: Choose from various templates to swiftly create your unique contract. The contract creation stage is fun and ensures consistency throughout. You don’t have to go through any manual hassle in the initial drafting stage.

Negotiation: Exchange contracts for a smooth collaboration with vendors and stakeholders. Track changes and ensure all parties are updated, saving you from back-and-forth follow-ups.

Approval: Automate the entire approval cycle by adding contracts to hand-picked workflows. The stakeholders receive prompt notifications, and approvals are tracked within the system.

Execution: Receive electronic signatures from all parties and store them securely in the cloud. The contracts are organized by categories or tags, allowing quick retrieval. There is no need to print, scan, or mail contracts. All data is available in the software.

Monitoring and compliance: Receive automated reminders for tracking deadlines or expirations. It eliminates the trouble of manual record-keeping to track when the next renewal is due.

Audit and reporting: View the audit trail of every action associated with a contract. From the edits to the approvals phase, utilize advanced analytics to evaluate contract performance, cycle times, and bottlenecks, and stay tuned to all essential data.

Top B2B SAAS Contract Automation Softwares for 2025

Now that we have covered how a SaaS tool will benefit you, let’s dive into the best software solutions to choose from.

Pandodac

image 18

(Source: Pandodac)

This solution provides all data in a single document, helping you digitally create, approve, and sign contracts.

Key features

  • Drag and drop editor, simplifying proposal and contract writing.
  • Centralized, cloud-based contracts
  • Series of contract templates and pre-approved conditions

ContractWorks

image 19

(Source: ContractWorks)

The highlight of this software is its AI-powered OCR and search capabilities allowing you to locate particular words. Its cloud-backed security features safeguard your data and make it accessible.

Key features

  • User-friendly interface simplifying onboarding of new employees
  • Personalized reporting provides important insight
  • Creates tag-based reports to share with your stakeholders

Gatekeeper

image 20

(Source: Gatekeeper)

Besides offering a centralized information center, the AI-powered software provides an auditable record of operations.

Key features

  • One of the most reliable, quick, and efficient systems in the market
  • Optimizes contracts
  • Integrated electronic signature compliant with regulatory standards

Trackado

image 21

(Source: Trackado)

Trackado is another cloud-based SaaS to assist you with streamlining the entire contract lifecycle. It simplifies finding and collecting contracts based on category, sector, or business partner. The best part is— it doesn’t require any extensive training.

Key features

  • Organizes contacts, stores emails in one location
  • Tracks all activities
  • Sends real-time notifications

Concord

image 22

(Source: Concord)

You can access various tools for automating and integrating the contract lifecycle with this software. Its pre-approved templates offer smooth contract drafting.

Key features

  • Custom approval workflows for contract distribution
  • Version control to allow users access to the recent versions
  • Overview of the status of all contracts

Contractbook

image 23

(Source: Contractbook)

If you want to write a contract directly, then this is the perfect software. It is integrated with a machine-friendly format and allows you to work with multiple teams to get a glimpse of your legal standing.

Key features

  • Invite outside guests
  • Build contracts from scratch, record, store, and send
  • Smart task management for staying on top of all contact updates

Signeasy

image 24

(Source: Signeasy)

Its eSignature API makes it super easy to sign contracts and manage documentation. If any signatures are pending, you immediately receive an auto-reminder.

Key features

  • Integration with multiple business tools like Google Drive and Microsoft SharePoint
  • Reusable templates
  • Contract categorization and secure storage

CloudEagle

image 25

(Source: CloudEagle)

This comprehensive SaaS contract management tool offers a user-friendly interface and robust features.

Key features

  • Customizable templates, automated reminders, and advanced data analytics
  • Tracking of contract negotiation and approvals
  • AI-driven contract insights, vendor management, and spend optimization

Best Practices to choose cloud-based contract management software:

There are so many options available for a SaaS platform, that choosing the right one could seem overwhelming. Here are some key factors to consider while picking the software for your brand:

Alignment with your needs: List out the features you are looking for in your brand. Is it a robust e-signature a customizable template or something else? Identify your key requirements and filter out those that fit the criteria.

Scalability: Determine the software that grows with your expanding business and the evolving contract requirements. Verify whether the solution can handle a high volume of contracts, users, and workflows without facing performance hiccups.

User-friendly: Complex functionality can reduce the pace of the integration process and hinder overall productivity. The software you select must have an interface that is easy to navigate.

Integration with other tools: Check if it is compatible with existing tools like CRM systems and financial platforms. Smooth integration will prevent data silos and save you time.

Security and compliance: Contractual agreements contain sensitive and confidential data, which makes security a top priority. While narrowing down on SaaS software, find features like encryption and regulatory compliance to ensure top-notch data security.

Automation and AI features: Repetitive tasks like reminders, approvals, and contract renewals can seem mundane and if not automated, they can go amiss. AI-powered features are embedded with insights that carve out the route for the best decision-making.

Customer support and reviews: Reliable customer support is a surefire way to improve customer satisfaction. Figure out software offering a robust framework for customer support by checking user reviews and getting an idea of the responsiveness in real-time.

Summing up

A consolidated platform is a must-have tool for tracking the approved workflows, keeping up with renewal dates, and streamlining contract negotiations. Don’t think twice before integrating an effective B2B SaaS contact management software. It offers insights into all this essential data in a single tab. While there is an array of software services in the market, our comprehensive list will guide you to incorporate the best platform.

Marketing-and-the-organizational-buy-in-website
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Marketing and the organizational buy-in

Marketing and the organizational buy-in

Marketing leaders need the C-suite buy-in. But is it doable if you present a bill instead of an investment proposal to your CFO? It’s time to reevaluate.

Marketing teams have been losing their budgets for a while now. Even though businesses have understood the value of digital transformations and reaching relevant customers through marketing channels, budgets have been down.

That is the total budget allocated from company revenue in 2024. Marketing teams are asked to do more with less. They face the brunt of low-quality leads. Marketing is blamed for a weak sales pipeline.

And what is expected of them? The message should reach the right audience. It should resonate with them. The message should be creative. It should reach and influence many people. The team has a long list of requirements.

A creative endeavor with chains wrapped around it. Marketing leaders must now speak the language of the financial department.

Marketing isn’t a cost. We have all known that. It is an investment to grow market share, build trust, and pioneer creative thought. But these strategies must see the light of day. The only way to achieve this is by acquiring organizational buy-in.

Marketing is about pioneering communications. It is talking the language the core customer and stakeholders understands. That includes your C-suites.

Organizations cannot exist disconnected from their customers. There is a reason B2B marketing is talked about.

Yet budgets are still slashed. Do companies not trust in creativity? Marketing is supposed to be synonymous with creativity.

Catchy subject lines, advertisements that stir emotions, blogs that stimulate curiosity and knowledge, and social posts that entertain. Marketing is thought of as an artistic expression that is good to have.

Let us change this perspective. Marketing is pioneering communications.

Through strategy, marketing enables an organization to form a relationship with its core customer en masse, makingmarketing a must-have for organizations investing in the long term.

But how do you convey this value to your Stakeholders?

C-Suite communication

Stakeholders understand one language: Growth. Every business needs to focus on short-term and long-term growth. And the top management is hungry for it.

Yet, there is a disconnect between long and short-term planning. Some business leaders chase short terms aggressively, which hampers their long-term bottom line.

And this trend has affected marketing the most. The top brass thinks it’s a cost. The perception must be altered to align better with reality. Marketing is an investment; it is far from a cost.

And that applies to B2B marketing. Marketing leaders need to convey their proposition w.r.t time and the financial benefits of their strategies in a given time. Most marketing teams present a bill to their CFOs and not a proposal of investment. This is a lost opportunity for marketing leaders to help the CEO and CFO understand the value of their strategies.

Business and Marketing goal alignment

CEOs and CFOs have business outcomes and objectives planned for the next 3-5-10 years. That is the optimist in them.

A marketing leader must make them realize the potential of marketing for the success of the plans.

What is crucial for a business to survive? Low CAC, high Customer LTV, and increased rates of retention.

Marketing leaders have to create an annual proposal that highlights the role of marketing in the process of acquisition and retention. Google refers to this as outcome-based marketing.

It is sending your CFO an investment plan rather than an invoice. For example, if your company is planning on increasing 12% profits in the next two years. You can effectively show how your budget can contribute to the success of that percentage.

You could outline a strategy that enables the C-suite to understand the impact of marketing on that number. If you must acquire 20 customers in those two years and retain at least 8 to hit that goal, then outline your marketing team’s role in achieving it.

From customer marketing to product-led marketing strategies, there is a host of game plans proven to work in favor of businesses.

Although, it requires you to align long-term business goals with marketing. That requires you to go further than generic top-funnel lead generation. It requires a growth mindset. It is the marketing leader’s job to communicate the role of marketing in increasing market share through brand awareness and reputation.

Quantify marketing impact on sales.

Brand awareness has become a metric of growth. It builds trust between the buyer and the provider. As the B2B buyer buys to mitigate and avoid the risks in their industry, this trust is crucial in boosting sales.

As Adobe’s survey finds, 70% of the buyers purchase from brands they trust. And top management must understand that acquiring the buyer’s trust is marketing’s job.

90% of SaaS companies fail in the first year. What a grim statistic.

One of the reasons a company fails is because they miss out on product-fit markets. Identifying the buyer is marketing’s job. If they are under budget, the cost of failure could very well be a disaster. Stakeholders must understand the role marketing plays in the long-term success of an organization. Marketing drives sales by enhancing the reputation of a brand.

The message delivery, communication channels, cultural sensitivities, capturing attention. There is a reason for doing all of it. Brand awareness drives growth.

An intangible metric provides tangible results.

It isn’t just sales and marketing alignment. It is an organizational effort to grow.

Budget cuts with the same workloads provide a challenge for the modern CMO.

Their creativity and problem-solving are pushed to the brink.

However, marketing leaders must learn to present growth statistics and convey them as an investment proposal, not a cost. As marketing becomes data-backed and the success of retaining a customer becomes apparent to the finance departments, they will align themselves with marketing. Please Check Data-Powered Marketing.

Marketing isn’t just a message, an ad, or a blog. It is a strategy of communicating with potential buyers and creating a bridge of trust. It is a driver of financial and reputational success.

And Ciente.io understands this. We provide unmatched experiences for your core customers and stakeholders. From brand awareness to amplification, our database provides B2B organizations by connecting them with relevant audiences and orchestrating marketing experiences for them.