Reinventing Virtual Events

CHAPTER 1How to Measure Event Effectiveness: Pipeline Generated versus Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

—Galileo Galilei

If you silo every role in a go‐to‐market (GTM) team and ask “what's the problem in GTM?,” 99% of every position will blame marketing. Why? Marketing is not generating revenue, or most marketing activities are not quantifiable. That is why chief marketing officers (CMOs) are white‐knuckled to take on a revenue number.

We have this ephemeral “brand awareness” metric that no one knows how to measure other than inferring that an increase in traffic or brand mentions must be positive. We are flustered hiring pricey CMOs who burn millions simply trying to justify their return on investment (ROI). Then they turn and blame the VP of Sales.

Your VP of Sales is quick to make excuses that the nine‐month sales cycle impedes hitting the ever‐more egregious targets the board sets. At month 10, they catch you holding the bag, but you've already paid out all that cheddar.

Marketing can do nothing, and there's very little chance you could return the ROI on this hire, even within a year when brand awareness takes many consecutive years to build. You can blow through whole funding rounds trying to nail GTM hiring, and that's before you even run your first Super Bowl ad.

That one time sales and marketing tried ...