The B2B marketing landscape is changing.
You can feel it in the air and see it happening in real-time.
Here are some of the most significant changes we’re seeing in B2B marketing in 2023:
- Most (65%) of B2B buyers are Gen Z or millennials, and they’re interested in the innovative ways technology can enhance and optimise their journey down the sales funnel.
- 54% of B2B marketers say they plan on investing more money in improving customer experiences to retain their clientele in an uncertain economy.
- B2B e-commerce is now the fastest-growing sales channel in B2B product sales
What do these insights tell us?
They tell us that creating a retentive, digital-forward buying experience directed at younger demographics is the key to thriving in this new age of B2B marketing.
To achieve these experiences, marketers must embrace new business intelligence strategies to help them stay on top of current trends, emerging technologies, and shifting customer wants/needs.
In other words, they need to use real-time reporting.
This article will define real-time reporting and compare it to traditional business intelligence reporting. We’ll also explain why it’s crucial to B2B marketing, its advantages, how it impacts ad management, its challenges, and tools and best practices for implementing this strategy.
Scroll to learn more! 👇
What is real-time reporting?
Real-time reporting is a practice where an online program or software gathers data about customers and shares it with marketers as soon as it becomes available.
It’s called “real-time” because it provides the most current, up-to-date information possible about the key performance indicators (KPIs) set by the marketer.
Real-time vs traditional reporting
You may be more familiar with traditional reporting, which involves collecting data over time – typically a month, quarter, or year – and organising it into a digestible report.
You can often accomplish this via automation, but it sometimes requires manual input and interpretation.
Why real-time reporting is crucial in B2B marketing
Real-time reporting is crucial in B2B marketing for two big reasons.
1. Enables prompt reactions to market shifts
Real-time reporting helps shorten marketers’ reaction times to shifts in the market. That’s because it shows you the most current information as it comes in, rather than what was current three months or a year ago.
This is critical to adapting quickly – and ahead of your competitors – in the fast-paced digital age!
2. Allows access to campaign performance on the go
Whereas traditional reporting requires marketers to download hefty reports containing months’ worth of data, real-time reporting is much more on-the-go friendly. You can view campaign performance updates as they arrive from your computer or mobile device, so long as they support the reporting platform or website.
With access to your campaign performance on the go, you can stay ahead of the competition no matter where you are – remotely, in the office, or even in a meeting with buyers.
Advantages of real-time reporting
1. Provides immediate insights for decision-making
With the immediate insights that real-time reporting provides, you can make decisions about your marketing campaigns faster.
This ensures you will always experience emerging trends or technologies that could benefit and innovate your company.
2. Allows campaign optimisation for better ROI
Access to the latest market and KPI data means you can optimise your campaign as needed for a better return on investment (ROI).
This flexibility could save you a lot of money and time.
The impact of real-time reporting on ad management
Real-time reporting is just as significant for ad management as it is for B2B marketing at large.
Let’s look at the potential impact real-time reporting could have on your ad management strategies.
1. Adjusting ads in real-time for maximum resonance
The first area of impact we want to cover is how real-time reporting enables you to adjust ads in real-time for maximum resonance.
Let’s say, for example, that you’re running an ad for a SaaS company that helps businesses manage their employees’ work schedules.
In the middle of your campaign, you discover from your real-time reporting tool that more people are viewing and clicking on the version of your ad that shows a cat sitting in front of a computer. However, your other ad that depicts a human being in an office is getting little traffic.
With this latest data, you decide to focus all your ad spend on the ad with the cat rather than the one with the human. As a result, your marketing KPIs start to increase.
All because you use real-time reporting to see which ad resonates with the most buyers and adjust your strategy accordingly.
2. Ensuring campaigns meet current market demands
Real-time reporting can also help you ensure that your ad campaigns are meeting the market’s current demands.
Market demands are constantly shifting. The only way to know what’s popular and will reach the most customers is to monitor their needs and wants – minute by minute, day by day.
You can’t rely solely on traditional reports that collected data over the past three or six months. That information could now very well be outdated.
Knowing what’s happening in the market now is the best way to keep your campaigns relevant and appealing to younger audiences. For that, you need real-time reporting!
Challenges and considerations
Let’s not pretend that real-time reporting is a perfect system, however. It comes with its challenges and considerations, which you should be fully aware of if you want to use it successfully.
Scroll down to learn about the potential pitfalls of real-time reporting that you may encounter 👇
1. Dealing with overwhelming data
Real-time reporting involves dealing with overwhelming amounts of data. This is especially true if you have several KPIs and metrics that you want to measure. The result is reams of information that you have to sort through.
Furthermore, unlike traditional reporting, where you might analyse a data report once every few weeks or months, real-time reporting requires you to keep up with ever-changing data daily.
Moreover, you must be able to interpret all that data accurately and make important decisions that could alter the course of your B2B marketing or ad management campaigns.
2. Ensuring accuracy in real-time metrics
Something else you should consider is how you will ensure accuracy in real-time metrics.
With thousands of data points being processed across multiple servers, verifying their validity and protecting yourself from making a bad (and costly) campaign decision based on false or incomplete information is a smart idea.
But with the sheer volume of data that real-time reporting yields, verifying it can be time-consuming.
One strategy that can help you deal with the data is to narrow down your KPIs and metrics to the most important ones. Focus on what’s most relevant and insightful rather than everything all at once. Then, the volume of data will be less daunting.
As for the second challenge, it’s important to remain vigilant and be intentional about real-time reporting at every stage of the process. This includes:
- Choosing sources of data that you’re confident will have a high measure of consistency and accuracy.
- Training your team to input manual data with care and precision.
- Using automated data collection tools and software.
- Reviewing the real-time data as it’s presented and being alert for potential inconsistencies or anomalies.
The good news is that choosing high-quality, well-organized, real-time reporting tools can mitigate (or at least reduce) the accuracy obstacle to a manageable size.
Tools for real-time reporting
These tools can help you navigate real-time reporting in your B2B ad campaigns.
Google Analytics
If you already have your ad campaign set up through Google Ads (as many B2B and B2C marketers do), you can access real-time reports about how your ads perform via Google Analytics.
Accessing the real-time view is as easy as going to the Reports tab in your Google Analytics account and clicking “Real-time.”
Just be aware that there are limitations to the accuracy and immediacy of the data in Google Analytics. For example, mobile traffic is batched and may take a few minutes to reflect on your report.
Furthermore, Google Analytics won’t integrate with other data sources that you may have outside the Google sphere.
Whatagraph
Whatagraph is a platform that displays live dashboards filled with marketing and advertising data from up to 40+ integrations.
For example, you can integrate Google Ads and Google Analytics as sources, Ahrefs, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, and more.
When you’re ready to create a report with the latest information to share with your team, you can do so within minutes.
Best practices for implementing real-time reporting
Once you have your real-time reporting tool set up, it’s time to learn how to implement it.
Namely, you need to successfully transition from traditional reporting to real-time. You also need to learn which KPIs and metrics are the most essential.
It’s lesson time!
How to transition from traditional reporting
The most important step you’ll take to transition from traditional reporting is to train your team (and yourself) on how to use the new real-time reporting tool.
In the same vein, you may need to increase the number of meetings you have with the other marketers in the company.
For example, you’ll hold conferences weekly instead of having monthly or quarterly meetings to discuss data reports. (Consider holding conferences virtually to make this easier and fit it into everyone’s busy schedules.)
You should also share real-time reports with your teams regularly. It may even help to allow all the managers in your B2B marketing agency or department access to the reporting tool itself.
This way, everyone is on the same page and can use their unique skills to identify opportunities for growth and potential problems in the data.
With all of you working together toward the same goal – using real-time reporting to optimise your B2B ad campaigns – the transition from traditional reporting will take far less time and effort.
How to set up essential KPIs and metrics
There are hundreds of different KPIs and metrics you could track.
But, as we mentioned before, narrowing them down to the most important ones will help cut down on overwhelming volumes of data that could be clearer and more insightful.
So, how do you choose the KPIs and metrics that are the most essential? You should think about your campaign goals.
For example, if your agency’s goal is to raise brand awareness among your customer base through display ads, then tracking impressions will help you get an accurate picture of your level of success.
But let’s say your goal is to encourage repeat purchases from past customers. In that case, monitoring how many people clicked on the product or service link in your latest email marketing campaign may be a better area to focus your attention and measure success.
Talk with your team about the big and small goals for each ad campaign. Choose KPIs that will show you if you’re meeting those goals. If they’re not, use that as an opportunity to adjust and optimise your campaign.
Real-time reporting: the last word
We’ve reached the end of the road for this article, but now it’s time for you to begin a new journey! You’re now aware of the importance of real-time reporting in B2B marketing and ad management.
With that knowledge, you’re also well on your way toward integrating real-time reporting and all its advantages into your corner of the B2B marketing landscape.
B2B marketing may be changing, but you can easily catch up with real-time reporting.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What sets real-time reporting apart from traditional methods?
Real-time reporting delivers data to marketers minute by minute, whereas traditional reporting collects information over a long period.
This information is then relayed to marketers as reports that cover anywhere from 1-12 months.
Whereas traditional reporting can be slow and behind the trends, real-time reporting lets you stay on top of and react promptly to market shifts as they happen.
How do we ensure accurate data in real-time reporting?
Ensuring accurate data in real-time reporting is a matter of staying vigilant at every point in the process, from choosing data sources, setting appropriate KPIs and metrics, inputting data and reviewing the results with a critical eye.
What are some tips for choosing a real-time reporting tool?
When choosing a real-time reporting tool, look for one that can integrate with all your data sources and ad management tools (i.e., Google Analytics and Google Ads Manager).
You should also look for a tool that will allow you to set your KPIs and metrics. Finally, it should provide collaboration workflows so you can share reports and dashboards with your team members.
