How Datacubed Health Measures Brand ROI: A Framework for B2B Tech Founders
Every B2B founder has faced this moment: your marketing team proposes a brand-building campaign, and your first response is “But what’s the ROI?” In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Datacubed Health CEO Brett Kleger shared a counterintuitive framework for answering this eternal question – one that challenges conventional wisdom about brand measurement.
The Problem with Traditional Brand ROI
Most B2B companies approach brand ROI through lead generation metrics – a framework that often fails to capture the full impact of brand investments. Brett encountered this challenge when building Datacubed Health’s presence in the clinical trials space: “I love that question because it is the impossible question to answer.”
Instead of trying to force-fit traditional metrics, Brett developed a two-tier approach that acknowledges both the measurable and intangible aspects of brand building.
The Two-Tier Marketing Framework
Datacubed Health’s marketing strategy splits into two distinct areas:
- Lead Management: “The ROI is the simple ROI for lead management. How much, how many leads come in, what do we spend on it and how does it turn into an end sale? That’s very easy.”
- Brand Building: This is where Brett’s approach becomes particularly innovative. Rather than trying to directly measure brand impact through traditional metrics, he measures it through sales team efficiency.
The Sales Efficiency Metric
The key insight in Brett’s framework is using sales team performance as a proxy for brand strength: “The way that I would measure that is really looking at my sales team when they are coming back and meeting with customers, are they having to spend more and more time to explain to the customer this is the company, this is who we are and start from scratch or did they get in and where I call it level three, level four where the customer knows datacube tells already.”
This approach provides a practical way to measure brand impact through the lens of sales efficiency – how much time sales teams spend explaining who you are versus actually discussing solutions.
Implementing the Framework
To operationalize this approach, Datacubed Health focuses on two parallel tracks:
- Persona-Based Marketing: “Part of the marketing philosophy is Persona based marketing. How do you reach different buyer personalities and market what they need?” This targeted approach ensures that brand messages resonate with specific decision-makers.
- Brand Equity Building: “Building the brand equity with broad based marketing, with thought leadership, just so that our customers can know the brand, can understand what the brands about.”
The key is balancing these approaches while maintaining a consistent message about reliability and expertise. As Brett notes, “We don’t want to be a sexy tool. We don’t want to be the shiny object that comes and goes very quickly but can’t deliver. We want to be seen as the company that knows the space and can deliver reliably.”
Beyond Traditional Thought Leadership
Brett’s approach to thought leadership extends beyond typical content marketing. Datacubed Health engages through:
- Conference speaking engagements
- Industry association leadership roles
- Advisory board positions
- Targeted webinars
- White papers and podcasts
The goal isn’t just visibility – it’s about establishing deep credibility that translates into sales efficiency.
The ROI Feedback Loop
What makes this framework particularly valuable is its self-reinforcing nature. As brand recognition grows, sales cycles shorten, allowing teams to focus on solution selling rather than company introduction. This efficiency gain provides a quantifiable metric for brand impact while simultaneously improving sales outcomes.
For B2B founders struggling with brand ROI measurement, Datacubed Health’s approach offers a practical framework that bridges the gap between marketing investments and business outcomes. It suggests that perhaps we’ve been measuring brand impact from the wrong end – instead of focusing solely on top-of-funnel metrics, we should be looking at how brand strength manifests in sales efficiency.
This isn’t just a measurement framework – it’s a different way of thinking about brand building in B2B markets, one that aligns marketing investments with tangible business outcomes while acknowledging the complex nature of enterprise sales cycles.
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