While the success of a communications strategy is directly tied to its ability to advance the business goals and associated KPIs, it is often difficult to draw a direct line to the concrete communications-specific metrics and KPIs that contribute to these overarching business goals. What kinds of metrics and KPIs have been most useful in connecting your communications strategy and priorities to the business goals?

To connect our Marketing and Corporate Communication strategy with business objectives, we have defined metrics that reflect the impact at each stage of the funnel and are directly linked to business KPIs.
In our case, the most useful are:
• Reach and engagement in key content (articles, collaborations, social media).
• Organic traffic and SEO positioning.
• Conversion on landing pages and asset download ratio (white papers, success stories).
• Opportunities influenced by demonstrations.
• Qualified leads generated by ABM, inbound, and email marketing campaigns.
• Cost per lead and contribution to the sales pipeline.
• Attendance and commercial follow-up of own and third-party events attendees.
These metrics allow us to demonstrate how each action contributes to objectives such as demand generation, positioning, and acceleration of the sales cycle. In addition, we integrate the data into dashboards that connect marketing and sales, to have a clear view of the impact on the business.

I recently did a LinkedIn series where I talked about replacing vanity metrics with metrics that connect to business goals and outcomes. I think you should start with the end in mind. What are you currently measuring (or can measure), and what business outcome aligns best?

This year, we rolled out a new strategy for the business. So for comms, we've come up with interesting ways to measure. For example, we rolled out the Strategy Enablement Index (SEI). The SEI is calculated as the weighted average of the two individual metrics, each contributing equally to the overall index:

- Business Priorities Awareness (BPA)- I have a clear understanding of the business priorities and pillars.
- Role Alignment Awareness (RAA) - I have a clear understanding of how my day-to-day activities and role support the business priorities.

Both are measured by converting the 5-point scale to a percentage from respondents in global surveys.

SEI = % of Respondents Scoring 4 or Above on BPA + % of Respondents Scoring 4 or Above on RAA)/ 2

Perhaps stating the obvious here, but one example that helps draw this line more directly comes from linking the marketing and communications strategies very closely with the lead generation tactics strategy. This makes it easier to measure the effectiveness of content or assets (including ABM campaign assets, gated white papers, CTAs to book a demo or order a starter pack for a product etc) based on actual engagement and leads, linking communications directly with these more tangible metrics and KPIs, and treating sales teams as the primary internal customer of their marketing and communications teams.