• Five Important Conversion Metrics in Paid Media for B2B Marketing

    Five Important Conversion Metrics in Paid Media for B2B Marketing

    In the B2B world, paid media isn’t just about traffic or impressions — it’s about generating real, measurable outcomes that contribute to pipeline and revenue. But with long sales cycles, multiple decision-makers and a highly targeted buyer journey, measuring success isn’t always straightforward.

    In order to cut through the noise, we’ve put together five of the most important conversion metrics every B2B paid media marketer should track to optimize campaigns and prove ROI of paid efforts:

    1. Cost Per Lead (CPL)

    What it tells you: How much you’re paying for each lead generated from your campaigns.

    Why it matters: CPL is a foundational metric that helps you measure the efficiency of your spend.  For B2B, leads are the gateway to sales, but not all leads are created equal. A low CPL might look great on paper, but if the leads aren’t qualified, it’s just wasted budget. Use CPL in conjunction with lead quality scoring to ensure you’re not just chasing volume, but attracting the right audiences at the right time in their customer journey.

    Pro tip: Segment CPL by source, campaign, and audience type to uncover which efforts are driving the best ROI.

    2. Marketing Qualified Leads

    What it tells you: How many of your leads meet predefined criteria such as job title, company size, engagement level, or intent signal, that make them more likely to convert down the funnel.

    Why it matters: Not every lead is ready to talk to sales. MQL metrics help you gauge if your campaigns are reaching the prospects who are most likely to convert down the line. Engaging and tracking those MQLs over time through the nurture process and sales funnel helps ensure your campaigns are generating interest from the right kind of prospects — those who are engaged, have intent, and fit your ideal customer profile.

    Pro tip: Collaborate closely with your sales team to define what constitutes an MQL. A clear, shared definition avoids misalignment and improves handoff efficiency.

    3. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate

    What it tells you: The percentage of leads that ultimately convert into paying customers.

    Why it matters: This metric gives you a zoomed-out view of campaign effectiveness and sales alignment. It helps you understand not just how many leads you’re generating, but how valuable those leads are in terms of actual revenue impact.

    Pro tip: Track this metric by campaign type, creative, audience segment or channel to identify which initiatives are truly moving the needle.

    4. Cost Per Opportunity (CPO)

    What it tells you: The average amount spent to generate one sales opportunity (Sales Qualified Lead or SQL).

    Why it matters: While CPL focuses on the top of the funnel, CPO dives deeper—connecting paid efforts to actual sales potential. This is a more meaningful way to evaluate ROI in a B2B context.

    Pro tip: If your CPO is too high, consider whether targeting, messaging, or lead nurturing needs adjustment.

    5. Pipeline Contribution

    What it tells you: The total dollar value of pipeline generated from your paid media leads.

    Why it matters: This is the ultimate B2B metric. It links your media spend directly to business impact and helps justify marketing investments to stakeholders.

    Advanced move: Track pipeline velocity alongside contribution to see how quickly leads are moving through stages.

    Final Thoughts

    In B2B paid media, vanity metrics won’t cut it. If you’re serious about proving performance and driving growth, focus on the metrics that tell a story from click to close. CPL, MQLs, lead-to-customer rate, CPO, and pipeline contribution together give you a clear, strategic lens into what’s working—and what’s not.

    Need help setting up the right tracking or measurement framework? Have questions about  how to nurture your leads once you have them? Talk to our experts!

    Jeanne Martin

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  • DIY SEO – Four Easy Steps you can take to improve your Search Engine Visibility

    DIY SEO – Four Easy Steps you can take to improve your Search Engine Visibility

    Search Engine Optimization [SEO], is one of the best free marketing channels for any small or medium-sized business. If you’re anything like 89% of typical consumers, chances are that your buyer journey begins with a search, whether that be on Google, Amazon, or any other site that features a search engine. 

    Here at Matter, we provide enterprise-level search engine optimization and search engine marketing [SEM] (paid ads) to a variety of large and medium-sized businesses. That being said, we realize that there are plenty of small businesses and mom-and-pop operations that are just looking to do the legwork themselves. 

    DIY SEO is the process of improving your site’s organic search visibility without paying an agency or expensive SEO tools to do the job for you. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing SEO in-house, but it’s important to understand the basics so you’re making the most of your time and getting the results you’re looking for. As your marketing partner, we’ve provided you with a step-by-step guide to DIY SEO!

    Step 1: Keyword Research

    The first step of DIY SEO is determining what keyword you need to rank for. If your brand isn’t well known, you’ll have to rank for non-branded keywords, which are common tongue words and phrases that either describe what you do or how you do it. This should always start with a google search. 

    To find the best search terms, ask yourself a simple question: “If I were looking for this product or service, how would I search for it?” Search engines like Google and Yahoo have been widely utilized for over 20 years now, and most of us know exactly how to find a product especially if we’re knowledgeable about the subject. Trust that you know 

    You’ll notice that when you start to search for a term, your search term is appended with several variations. If you’re trying to rank for GRC, which stands for “Governance, Risk, and Compliance,” you won’t want to target that term directly. Instead play around with the search bar to find longer phrases since those are usually far easier to rank for. 

    Another useful way to find keywords is leveraging AI tools like Chat GPT and Google Gemini, with some prodding you can typically get some good ideas around more general subjects. In this instance we’ve asked Gemini “If you were looking for forensic engineering, what would you google search?” The original response was too broad, so we then asked it to be more specific. The results gave us some great ideas around some specific sub-services related to the parent topic:

    Step 2: On-Page and Off-Page SEO

    Once you’ve determined your subject and created your webpage, you’ll need to optimize it. Most Content Management Systems [CMS] like WordPress and Wix have SEO plugins that you can download for free, but it’s still good to know some basic best practices. 

    On-page SEO involves marking up the visible part of the webpage (the one you’re looking at now) to make sure that all of your target keywords are in the body text and you’re including them within your header tags. In this instance the, “Step 2: On-Page and Off-Page SEO” is one of our header tags because we believe that it’s one of the most important parts of DIY SEO- that’s the same type of process you should be thinking about when laying out pages. 

    Other on-page SEO best practices include:

    • Include your target keyword in the title 
    • Putting keyword related to your parent topics in the headers of your page
    • Using bulleted lists to make information more readable
    • Adding images and video content to make content more dynamic

    Off-page SEO deals directly with non-visible elements of the page. Within your page builder, you’ll typically see blank areas that talk about meta fields, local schema, social markup, etc… The most important thing to denote on these pages are the meta title (usually the same text as your regular title) and your meta description (a brief description of what a user can expect to find on the page if they’re looking at search results. Populating these fields with keywords is another great way to improve the rankings of your webpages. 

    The most important part of on-page SEO is content quality. Make sure, as you write the document, that the information you’re providing is helpful and digestible to a normal user. Google values websites that create helpful, reliable, people-first content, and automatically assigns higher rankings to sites that do so on a regular and consistent basis. 

    Other off-page SEO best practices include: 

    • Setting alt attributes to images to rank in Google image results
    • Setting schema (or structured data) on local, about, and other niche page types
    • Ensuring that your URL contains the keyword you want to rank for
    • Ensuring that meta data and URLs aren’t overly long and accurately convey what’s on the page

    Step 3: Local SEO

    If you’re a local business, you realize the importance of getting in front of the people in your area. One of the most effective tools to get in front of local audiences is through your Google Business Profile. 

    After following the instructions given via Google about how to claim your business, you’re ready to start optimizing. In this context more information is better; making sure your address is correct, business hours are updated, your asking your clients for reviews, and you accurately designating your service areas are all best practices. 

    Step 4: Technical SEO + Tracking

    Typically, Tech SEO issues only plague large sites, but it’s good to keep a pulse on both site performance and organic performance. We recommend Google Search Console as it only gives organic data rather than GA4’s all encompassing site traffic information. 

    Speaking about technical SEO specifically, the most important thing to keep an eye on are you core web vitals, which use a variety of different measurements to determine whether your URLs are good, need improvement, or are poor in terms of page performance. Normally, page-speed or page responsiveness will bring these KPI’s down and should be fixed by either minimizing large image files, and ensuring that your plugins are updated or you’re deleting the ones that aren’t currently used. 

    SEO is an ongoing process, but with these four key tips you’ll be ranking and generating traffic in no-time. If you need help with SEO or you’re looking to run some paid Google Ads, visit our SEO and SEM services page and take a look at our client success stories.

    Ethan Lyons

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  • Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    In today’s digital landscape, the belief that marketing programs can always be refined is fundamental. Capturing, synthesizing and understanding all available data is crucial for identifying areas of improvement whether you are targeting consumers directly or influencing the C-suite buying committee. Marketing performance typically lags in three key areas: brand strategy, awareness and the marketing funnel.

    Why Every Marketing Program Needs Continuous Improvement

    No matter how advanced your marketing strategy is, there’s always room for improvement. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the key to analyzing the performance of your marketing tactics across the conversion funnel, helping you identify steps to boost the percentage of site visitors converting on landing pages or from one stage of the funnel to the next. By leveraging a set of tools and harnessing the vast campaign data they are already generating, marketers can significantly enhance their marketing programs’ performance.

    Before diving into your optimization efforts, it’s essential to conduct a thorough marketing strategy audit. This will help you pinpoint any gaps in your marketing programs and identify key areas for improvement. Once you’ve identified these areas, it’s time to start optimizing your marketing performance. Here are 10 conversion rate optimization best practices MatterMKTG prioritizes for clients:

    Brand Strategy: Setting the Foundation for Success

    1. Evaluate Your Competition

    To ensure your brand stands out, regularly assess your competition. Are you differentiating your message effectively? By identifying the core messaging of your competitors, you should see how you can make your messaging unique and stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

    2. Re-evaluate Your Audience

    Knowing your audience is key. Are you addressing their needs and concerns? If you aren’t speaking directly to your buyer’s most critical pain points, no mix of media and content will help improve conversions. Re-evaluate your messaging and buyer personas to ensure it resonates with what they care about. Once you are confident you know your audience and what your competition is doing, bring these insights together to develop new brand messaging that is meaningful (important to the audience) and unique (stands out from your competitors).

    3. Test Your Messaging

    Experiment with different messages to see what resonates best with your audience. This could involve split testing headlines, value propositions, or CTA buttons either on your website or through user testing tools. The audience must be intrigued by your messaging to want to learn more and be provided with enough information to know what you do and how you can help them.

    Brand Awareness: Maximizing Your Reach

    4. Media Mix Analysis

    Examine your media mix to spot weaknesses. Are you leveraging SEO, social media, PR and paid advertising effectively? Each channel plays a critical role in driving brand awareness. If you aren’t getting the impressions or website traffic you expect, you may need to rethink your media strategy.

    5. SEO Strategy

    Revisit your content and keyword strategy. Are you optimizing your product pages and campaign landing pages? Consider using SEO tools like SEMrush or Moz to identify opportunities for improvement.

    6. Paid Media Campaigns

    Many brands make the mistake of thinking their organic channels can drive new leads alone. Paid campaigns play a critical role in reaching the desired audiences directly and more frequently. Even a small paid media campaign can drive significant traffic to key landing pages. Invest strategically to boost visibility where it matters most.

    Marketing Funnel and Conversions: Driving Results

    7. Conduct a Closed-Won Audit

    Analyze your successful deals to identify which industries, job titles or media channels are driving the most business. Understanding the factors behind these wins can inform your CRO strategy. Go a step further and analyze what drives conversions in each step of your funnel. This process will uncover patterns, such as a certain piece of content that consistently converts with certain job titles or industries.

    8. Heat Mapping and Website Flow

    Utilize heat mapping tools to understand user behavior and how site visitors interact with your website. Heatmapping can reveal deeper user insights, like what information a visitor is spending time reading or which CTAs they click. This data can highlight areas for improvement helping you enhance user experience and improve conversions.

    9. A/B Testing Lower Funnel Offers

    Split testing is crucial for optimizing conversion points. Experiment with different offers and CTAs in the lower funnel, limiting your variables to one focus area at a time to see what drives higher conversion rates.

     10. Implementing CRO Best Practices

    Effective CRO requires a strategic approach, focusing on continuous testing and optimization efforts. By regularly evaluating your brand strategy, enhancing brand awareness, and fine-tuning your marketing funnel, you can achieve higher conversion rates and overall marketing success.

    Remember, every element of your marketing strategy can be optimized. By leveraging data, testing different approaches, and refining your tactics, you can elevate your brand and achieve better results. Start your CRO journey today and see the difference it can make for your website visitors and long-term growth.

    Wyatt Craig

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  • Marketing Jump Start Part II: Optimizing Your Digital Ecosystem

    Marketing Jump Start Part II: Optimizing Your Digital Ecosystem

    While the digital landscape has changed over the past few months, businesses are still looking to accomplish the same goals: generate leads/sales, drive awareness and/or engagement, and sustain or grow their leadership position. To do so, it’s imperative to focus holistically on optimizing your digital ecosystem. A consistent focus on the following programs will help your business continue to succeed: 

    • Optimize your website/landing pages. 
    • Consistently evaluate your paid, owned and earned media strategies. 
    • Nurture leads with effective email marketing/marketing automation strategies.

    When your digital ecosystem is a well-oiled machine, your marketing efforts will drive brand awareness and preference, as well as increased engagement and higher quality leads. 

    Step 1: Optimizing Your Website/Landing Pages 

    Your media programs, social media channels and email marketing campaigns may be in good working order, but if you’re website isn’t functional or on-brand, you simply won’t succeed. At the center of a healthy digital ecosystem is a well-crafted company website. Here’s what you should focus on to ensure your website is ready to support your digital efforts: 

    Branding and Messaging:

    • Make sure your branding and messaging make sense. What is your website about? Does the tone and manner of the content match your brand? Is the brand identity consistent throughout the website? Is the design visually appealing, clean and straight-forward? Your brand positioning should be clear and obvious on your home page and your content should be easy to scan.

    Navigation & UX:

    • Do you have goals to track performance? What is each page trying to achieve based on your UX strategy? 
    • Keep your site or landing page’s main navigation simple and intuitive. Don’t get too carried away with bloated “mega-menu” designs unless they are necessary. Prioritize “above the fold” content that intrigues users to scroll down and further engage with your site. 
    • Make sure to incorporate CTAs to show the next steps. You want to take the user down a path that helps them make an informed decision. Be sure to add a CTA enticing visitors to follow your social networks, and include follow and share icons in header and footer. 
    • Don’t set it and forget it. Continuously test your homepage and be sure it’s helping you reach your goals.

    Search Engine Optimization:

    • Every page of your website is a potential search engine entry point, so assign a primary keyword topic to each. Placing that keyword in areas of emphasis like the title tag, main heading and even the URL helps Google identify the main topic. 
    • Don’t skimp on copy, especially for your most important or competitive keywords. Google typically won’t rank pages with “thin” content (one or two sentences) very highly. Images and video can help boost your standing, too. 
    • Mobile friendliness and page speed have become big parts of search algorithms. No matter how great your content is, if your webpage loads slowly on mobile devices, chances are Google won’t serve it up to searchers. 

    Step 2: Evaluate Your Paid Media Strategies to Drive Traffic and General Leads 

    Consumer habits, business drivers and competitive landscapes have changed in this new business environment, so now is the time to reset or re-evaluate your existing digital programs to ensure you’re continuing to drive maximum effectiveness. Start by defining goals and budgets through one of these methods: 

    • Top down: What is my budget? At a reasonable cost per lead or cost per sale, what results am I likely to generate? 
    • Bottom up: What are my sales goals? At a reasonable cost per lead or cost per sale, what budget do I need to secure to reach these goals?
      • Next, identify your target segments and understand their media consumption habits and purchase influences. Detailed personas and journey mapping are the best practice tools for this job. 
      • Re-assess objectives, current results and KPI’s of all existing programs – The most effective way to evaluate your paid media campaigns are through the objectives set from launch. 
    • Consider or re-evaluate all valuable media vehicles – Aside from the traditional banner ads and search results, adjust to focus on high converting channels within your industry trends. 
    • Ensure you have relatable content that drives engagement – Providing viewers with valuable content in exchange for their information is a great way to drive traffic to your website and helps to generate more qualified leads. 
    • Utilize a dashboard that offers real-time results for consistent assessment – The most successful campaigns are the ones with eyes constantly on them. Evaluate, optimize and re-strategize based on the real-time results provided from dashboards. 
    • Consistently track and optimize until performance is steady – Digital campaigns need attention throughout each program. Weekly and sometimes daily changes are necessary to increase performance and stay on track to meet the established KPIs. Once a test channel is proven out, it can “graduate” to a proven place in your plan. 

    Step 3: Are You Nurturing Leads with Emailing Marketing or Marketing Automation? 

    Whether it’s Constant Contact, HubSpot, Pardot or another email marketing system, strategically tracking and segmenting your leads with a nurture strategy is a huge driver in building relationships with your prospects and moving leads down the funnel. Here are five steps to ensuring a successful start: 

    • Attract: Capture leads with a compelling and concise lead capture form that is personalized enough to sustain interest 
    • Personalize: Promote an offer or content that is attractive enough to motivate your customer segments. 
    • Engage: Create a workflow strategy for each segment that will nurture the relationship and drive prospects down the funnel. 
    • Create: Design and develop emails that are attractive and well-crafted, utilizing graphics and imagery where possible. 
    • Test: Once you’re up and running, continue to optimize your strategy! 

    Is your digital marketing ecosystem driving high quality leads? Fill out the form below and let’s talk about what optimizations you can make today.

    Jeff Tahnk

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