We asked 10 B2B marketers: what’s one content metric you trust? 

Benjamin Disraeli famously claimed that there were three types of untruths: lies, damned lies, and statistics. B2B marketers trying to correlate content metrics with campaign success know how real this is.  

Ten stats will tell you eleven different stories about your performance – not the most helpful when you’re experimenting with new ideas, or trying to compete in a changing market. In an age of LinkedIn boasts and rising expectations, it’s tempting to focus on the most flattering metrics and discard the rest.  

But the point of a campaign isn’t clicks or likes, it’s sales. 

Isoline Communications polled leading B2B marketers on the content metrics they trust to tell them the truth about their assets.  We found that, once you look beyond vanity metrics, optimizing your output based on certain statistics can bring you much closer to campaign success every single time.  

Here’s what they had to say. 

1. Engagement rate reveals true audience resonance 

Measuring engagement rate – data concerning how deeply your audience interact with your content – is an easy way to dig deeper on assets like emails and social media posts. Analysing engagement data to see what triggers interest (or turns potential clients away) can prove to be hugely valuable. 

“On one of the campaigns, I observed that people were high loading the whitepaper but had very low time-on-page which suggests they weren’t engaging well. This epiphany inspired a repackage of the content for clarity that ultimately increased both engagement and lead quality.”  

Amanda New, Founder, Cash For Houses Girl 

2. Repeat order velocity: the trust metric that pays bills 

Repeat order velocity is a sales-focused metric that demonstrates how quickly customers choose to re-engage your business. Collecting this information allows you to understand how your clients perceive you and how you can best add value for them. 

“When we launched, we had a construction marketing head in Melbourne who had a terrible first experience with us. We didn’t call her when we said we would, didn’t communicate delays, just dropped the ball completely. After we fixed it and she gave us another shot, she reordered within 6 weeks. That velocity told us we’d actually solved the problem, not just apologized our way through it.” 

Ben Read, CEO, Mercha 

3. Cold outreach reply rate trumps vanity metrics 

Aaron Franklin told us his favourite content metric was cold outreach reply rate, a statistic which measures how regularly potential clients respond to campaigns. While other social media content metrics – click-through, likes, or views – may be larger than reply rate, the friction associated with replying suggests a more qualified customer.  

“I try to monitor reply sentiment (positive, neutral or negative) while we scaled our outreach efforts; when someone replies to your campaign you are doing something right. When you are ignored, your message is generic.  

If you receive a response, positive or negative you are engaged in a conversation which is how deals start.” 

Aaron Franklin, Head of Growth, Ylopo 

4. Pipeline influence links content directly to revenue 

Pipeline influence shows how different types of content affect the sales pipeline, providing an estimate of the value-add of opportunities generated by marketing materials. Measuring influence is particularly useful when creating a holistic content infrastructure, as it supports the development of a campaign that complements every stage of sales. 

“For example, a research-based case study that the potential customer downloaded during the consideration stage, or the invitation to the live webinar, slid into by the sales team to the mid-funnel or net-new prospects, can be investigated to understand if these two actions lead to the closed-lost or closed-won opportunities or assist in converting the MQLs to SQLs 

This helps tie content touchpoints to the buyer’s journey, and ensures your marketing strategy is driven by the intention to meet the predetermined business goals. Thus, it helps a B2B marketer remain focused on relevant content outcomes and not on the vanity metrics, such as clicks or views.” 

Pavel Khaykin, VP of Marketing, NEYA 

5. MQL-SAL conversion rate proves content value 

Marketing qualified leads to sales accepted lead conversion rate is primarily a measure of efficacy: it tells you how many individuals move through your sales pipeline as a result of your content. This is especially helpful when measuring ROI of particular campaigns. 

“Many B2B marketers spend so much time on top-of-funnel numbers such as downloads or page views but those are indicators of soft interest that never result in revenue. At TSL Australia, our content has to directly support the sales team, so we seek measurable movement down the funnel. 

For example, a recent technical article on DDP Incoterms demonstrated an 18.75 percent MQL-to-SAL conversion rate over a three-month period, which is a full 6.25 point increase over content that focuses only on generic service descriptions. This measure is a direct validation of the content investment since it measures sales readiness and not just casual curiosity.” 

Allan Hou, Sales Director, TSL Australia 

6. UTM Tracking Reveals True Content Conversion Power 

UTM tracking is a strategy of adding short codes to the end of URLs to gather information about how audiences interact with content. Through UTM tracking, you can gather information about how many qualified leads your material is producing, facilitating easy monitoring of ROI across content type and focus. 

“You can’t measure what really matters, — converting users — with non-conversion metrics such as likes, shares, comments, or page views. That’s why unless your content has conversion signals (i.e., form submissions from your blog post, or demo requests from your case study), I don’t care how many people engaged with your content. 

For example, one of our SaaS clients was astounded when we revealed that their technical guides were quietly outperforming all of their other marketing collateral investments. They received a lot of attention with the flashy stuff, but they were getting conversions from the guides.” 

Michelle Garrison, Event Tech and AI Strategist, We & Goliath 

7. Gated content usage outweighs download numbers 

The benefits and downsides of gating have been the subject of frequent debate. Bernadette King suggests analysing engagement with gated assets more deeply, looking at open rates and time spent, in order to more fully understand what interested audiences like seeing most from content. 

“When I was doing B2B for a jewellery manufacturer, we had a retail buying guide that got hundreds of downloads. It felt great until we realized only 18% were actually opening the PDF.  

We stripped out half the fluff, added real pricing benchmarks and supplier comparison charts–stuff buyers actually needed for their next meeting. The open rate jumped to 61% and we started getting callback requests specifically mentioning details from page 3 or 4. 

I now embed tracking pixels in PDFs and check heatmaps on key pages–if people aren’t reading past your intro, your content isn’t solving the problem you promised to solve.” 

Bernadette King, CEO, King Digital Pros 

8. Demo-to-contract speed determines content effectiveness 

As mentioned above with repeat orders, tracking velocity can provide valuable information on how effective your marketing materials are. Analysing demo-to-contract speed highlights what materials most quickly convince clients. 

“The results are pretty clear. After sending prospects AI video demos, we found customer testimonial reels lead to faster signatures than technical deep-dives. This is my favourite way to test content because it shows what actually shortens the sales process, not just what gets a lot of views.” 

Runbo Li, CEO, Magic Hour 

9. Regression analysis connects content to pipeline results 

Analysing your statistics mathematically – for example, by performing a regression analysis – allows you to establish more meaningful relationships between content and results, without inconsistencies unduly affecting the result.  

“This approach can establish a meaningful correlation between specific content interactions and actual outcomes. We’ve implemented systems that map various content touchpoints throughout the buyer journey, allowing us to identify which specific content assets are driving qualified opportunities.” 

Lars Nyman, Chief Marketing Officer, Nyman Media 

10. Newsletter sign-ups signal deeper customer trust

Organic newsletter signups, especially for B2B business, signal belief in thought leadership produced by your business and buy-in to your vision. This can be a useful window into your reputation with customers. 

“For us, we had a SaaS client who experienced minimal demo requests yet their newsletter subscriber base continued to expand. We focused on developing deep sector insights for lead nurturing because of this trend. The company achieved major enterprise pipeline growth through sign-up conversions which occurred during several months of operation.  

Traffic generates value but leads represent greater worth than opt-ins because they indicate customer trust.” 

Vincent Carrié, CEO, Purple Media 

One content metric to rule them all (or not?) 

So which content metric is the magic key to guaranteeing success every time?  

The short answer: none – or maybe all.  

The long answer: It depends on your business, and what you do with your data. The statistics that best speak to how customers interact with campaigns are unique; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.  

And once leading B2B marketers identify their metrics, they don’t stop at tracking. They examine, probe, and analyse, asking themselves how they can use the information at hand to make content magic. 

Here at Isoline, we’re experts in combining data-driven insights with creativity to create campaigns that stick. Interested in transforming your content? Get in touch with us at hello@isolinecomms.com.