Marketing teams have focused their strategies on generating the marketing qualified leads (MQLs) over the years. These top-of-funnel metrics can give momentum to the businesses but don’t guarantee the impact. While the metrics like impressions, clicks, and MQLs (marketing qualified leads) served their purpose, the B2B marketing landscape has entirely changed now.
Today, it’s not just about how many leads marketing can bring in — it’s about how many of those leads will convert into revenue. Businesses are moving in the era of outcome-driven marketing, where the focus shifts from vanity metrics to revenue-focused KPIs.
This change is more than just reporting numbers; it redefines the role of marketing as a growth, sales and ROI center and not just a lead engine.
Why are MQLs No Longer Enough?
There were days when MQLs were long considered the benchmark for measuring marketing performance. However, they don’t provide a complete picture. A high number of MQLs might look impressive, but if those leads don’t convert into sales-qualified leads (SQLs) or closed deals, then they don’t contribute anything to the business.
Below are the challenges of MQLs and why they are not enough:
- They don’t reflect true buyer intent
- Sales teams often disregard them due to poor lead quality
- They’re based on form submissions, downloads, etc.
- They fail to contribute to revenue directly.
This misalignment between marketing and revenue has led to increased scrutiny on marketing performance — especially in today’s tighter budget climate.
The Rise of Outcome-Driven Marketing Metrics
B2B marketers are now moving towards the KPIs that are performance and ROI driven. Below listed are the key revenue-focused marketing metrics.
Key Revenue-Focused Marketing Metrics
1. Marketing Sourced Pipeline:
This is the total ticket size of opportunities that are generated from marketing efforts. It gives clear insight into how marketing contributes to the sales and revenue generation.
2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):
It helps to understand how much it costs to acquire a new customer through marketing activities. Knowing the CAC is important for understanding ROI.
3. Marketing-influenced Revenue:
This tells the marketing impact in a buyer journey by tracking the total revenue influenced by marketing — even if the deal was closed by sales.
4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV):
This is the total expected lifetime revenue to be generated by a customer. This helps to prioritize high-quality leads with lasting value.
5. Revenue Per Lead (RPL):
A metric that shows how much revenue, on average, each lead contributes. This helps to move away from volume and toward quality.
Aligning Marketing with Sales and Revenue
Outcome-driven marketing isn’t an effort of only one team. It demands the close alignment of marketing with sales and revenue operations. This is the reason why solutions like VM Intelligence are important because they deliver account-specific insights that both marketing and sales can act on in real time.
This alignment helps answer questions like:
- Are we engaging the right decision-makers at the right time?
- Are our campaigns accelerating opportunities through the funnel?
- Are we engaging with the accounts that sales prioritize the most?
By connecting content engagement data with revenue insights, Vereigen Media ensures every campaign isn’t just generating interest—it’s driving impact.
Final Thoughts
The days of chasing MQLs are over. Revenue-focused marketing is the future. It’s smarter, more strategic, and aligned with what really matters—growth. It is important to track the right metrics to direct marketing efforts to drive returns.
Marketing teams must track metrics that go beyond volume and focus on real business impact. That means prioritizing lead quality, aligning with sales, leveraging first-party data, and investing in tools that connect every campaign to pipeline and revenue.
If you’re ready to make the shift, Vereigen Media is here to help. With real-time insights, human-verified engagement, and intelligent outreach, we don’t just generate leads. We help businesses with outcome-driven marketing.
Let’s turn your KPIs into ROI. Connect with our team today!
By Manraj Singh
