Over the past decade, B2B marketers have changed theirs focus. They no longer focus on resources, but on generating revenue. They are trying to balance between increasing sales and maximizing return on investment (ROI). This in its essence, it represents "revenue marketing" itself.
Expansion revenue marketing is a discipline that is a direct result of new tools and customer relationship management (CRM) models. In B2B companies driven by sales, marketers gained the ability to make decisions about goal settings companies. They are credited with tracking the effect of every euro invested.
The article was revised and updated in May 2026.
CRM systems now make it easier to track how campaign investments are generating leads, how leads are being generated they become opportunities and how opportunities become customers. The result is a new focus on return on investment, or optimizing the marketing mix to obtain the highest possible sales from a given marketing investment.
In the most sophisticated in companies, revenue marketing drives sales. People in the sales department they no longer make cold calls. Instead, marketing takes care of inbounds all the time leads until they are ready to sell.
In these companies, marketers are paid the same as sales people: they have goals for sales and compensation from acquired leads. Quarterly the planning process begins with setting goals for sales and is reflected in investments in marketing and sales.
Revenue Marketing Journey Model (RMJ)
Traditional the marketing mix uses the 4Ps. It focuses on creation and implementation marketing strategies and tactics, without a good idea of the impact on sales. Typically, several activity-based metrics are reported, such as count advertisements and impressions. For most companies, it is a deaf place to turn to spends a lot of budget and provides metrics that senior management cares about not interested.
The RMJ model was created to help marketers identify where they are in revenue marketing today and where they want to go. The model presents four different phases to achieve this goal: traditional marketing, lead generation, demand generation and revenue marketing. For large companies, the RMJ model becomes the economic engine that drives marketing, sales and overall revenue generation.
Lead generation: bad leads lead to faster sales
The first big step towards revenue marketing is a transition from traditional marketing to creation leads. At this stage, marketing has a responsibility to get as much as possible leads as he can. Many companies use lead generation strategies, but which do not lead to sales because they are not ready for it.
The reason why they are a lead shifted to sales is that sales must make the first contact. It can make a cold call, or call users who have already expressed interest e.g. by filling out a questionnaire.
The majority of companies has an e-mail system at this stage, but their practices for lead generation is often limited. They also have many manuals processes that convert leads into sales faster.
Metrics typically tracked at this stage include the number of emails sent, email open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), number of forms submitted, percentage of forms completed, and number of leads that lead to sales. Once a ready lead is moved to sales, marketing's job is done.
Demand generation: quality vs. quantity
Move from creation leads to demand generation is a huge step for most organizations. Creating inquiries is defined as a combination of sales and marketing activities, that place high quality (sales ready) leads at the top sales funnel.
Marketers do in this phase they focus less on quantity and more on displacement quality sales leads. Synergy and co-dependence begin to develop between sales and marketing. Companies that move towards creation of inquiries have usually invested in a marketing automation system that is integrated in their CRM.
Monitored metrics they are also significantly different from those in the previous phases. They are changing from activity-based metrics to profitability-based metrics.
Key metrics in this phase include:
- count marketing qualified leads (hereinafter MQL) shifted to sales,
- % MQL shifted trade that turned into opportunities,
- % opportunities that have closed
- contribution marketing to the overall goal of sales,
- average number of days to close the sale.
The demand generation phase is characterized by development processes that will eventually lead to the constant and predictable contribution of marketing to the creation of sales.
The last phase: revenue marketing
This phase includes everything that the previous phase, with the only difference: sales generated and allocated to marketing are repeatable, predictable and scalable. Revenue marketers use marketing automation technology that is integrable with CRM and determines how many MQLs are sent to of sales. It is predicted how many MQLs will be sent to sales and the company is able to predict the overall level of conversion.
Now it is not only possible to report what was achieved last quarter, but also to predict the future contribution of marketing to the creation of sales. Marketers are seen at this stage as an investment in sales. Thus, the role of marketing in the organization was fully transformed from a cost center to a sales center.
Marketing as a means of generating sales
Marketing means different things to different people. It can be a means of building brand awareness and also a tool for generating sales. If you are also interested in your B2B marketing generating more revenue than costs for you, use our B2B solutions service.
