The marketing industry is constantly evolving – a fact that is acknowledged by many leaders in the business. With the advent of technology, it has become quite easy to measure the performance and thus, data is now the king in the business. Majority of the marketers in the industry are now being asked to show the proof of how well the company’s budget on marketing is working. Assessing the Return on Investment or ROI of your lead gen campaign is very essential, but surprisingly majority of the professionals in the market are skeptical about how to do that.
So how do you measure the ROI on your overall marketing efforts? The answer is not so straightforward. To really evaluate the spending on marketing efforts for your business development you may need to use multiple strategies.
Lead Generation has Completely Changed the Conventional Marketing Approach.
Now days, B2B marketers mostly rely on lead generation and consider it as their primary goal of their marketing strategy. They are trying to reach leads that consume more media and expect an interactive approach.
Email marketing, content marketing, SEO, and event marketing are some of the most commonly used methods for B2B lead generation. As the results of these strategies can be measured in real-time, there is a window of opportunity that allows you to adapt quickly to the results and thus increase the overall performance.
Important Marketing Metrics.
It therefore becomes important to concentrate more on the efficacy of the individual channels of marketing to measure the ROI of your lead generation campaign. For example, after a thorough evaluation of your PPC, email marketing, content marketing, SEO, and social medial channels for luring more consumers, you are in a better position to determine which marketing channel needs more resources.
To understand this further, you must be able to calculate CPL (Cost per Lead) and CPA (Cost per Acquisition). Before you measure these two, you must fully calculate your overall marketing budget. It can involve all of your expenses on events, personnel, and paid marketing channels.
Let us take an example of cost of running an AdWords campaign.
Now CPL for AdWords can be calculated by taking a budget of $5000 per month and then dividing by the 1000 clicks. It is important to note here that we are considering only clicks and not the possible conversion of leads through these clicks. So now we have $10 Cost per Click for AdWords campaign. Let’s assume that 10% of these 1000 clicks are converted into leads by filling your gated content. Thus, you have 100 leads and the CPL can be calculated as $5000/100 = $50 CPL.
But, only having leads does not result in successful business. It is of no use to have those 1000 leads and unable to convert even one of them.
At this point, CPA jumps in. Let us go back to our previous example of $5000 per month and let’s assume that we convert those 100 leads that we generated at a rate of 10%. So now we have 10 paying clients by spending $5000 per month. Thus the CPA can be calculated as $300.
This number comes with a context. Depending upon your industry vertical, you might want to reassess and reorganize few things to get the right result.
In addition to this, you also need to consider the Average Value Order (AVO) and the Lifetime Customer Value (LCV). So with our example of $300 CPA, if we consider the AVO of $12,000 with additional revenue of say, $3000 from add-ons and support, we have the LCV as $15,000.
Big Data has changed the marketers’ approach.
It is extremely difficult to generate quality leads, something marketing departments are not always able to do. By assessing data from a wide range of sources, marketers have now started to figure out which leads hold most potential. Use of predictive analysis can be effective in terms of reviewing historical data, identifying new trends, and create a more efficient lead generation strategy. Marketing analytics does not necessarily mean the same as web analytics though it is important to understand the later.
Significance of Lead Source.
Once you grasp the results of the all the marketing channels and its overall performance, it’s the time to calculate why and how the results were produced. All the data can be now properly organized so that it helps you to develop a distinct plan of action to enhance the overall consumer experience.
Conclusion.
You now have complete information about the marketing channels, sales leads, and the previous results. This should now help you to better figure out the efforts that are simply wasting your money and others, which are generating leads with modest investment. Grasping the ROI on your lead generation campaign is about more than producing the desired number for the shareholders. A platform with comprehensive analytical tools will help you understand behavior of your customer, which in the end, is the key to generate quality leads and subsequently, more revenue.
Bob Samuels
Principal & Founder @ TechConnectr
Bob creates ‘double-mitzvah’ win-wins in B2B lead generation by utilizing analytics and strategic relationships. He has a strong background in finance, marketing optimization, and sales enablement.
Before founding TechConnectr, Bob co-founded Los Gatos-based NetLine Corporation, a leading digital B2B marketing solution provider, where he oversaw the execution of hundreds of performance marketing programs from a wide range of clients, including Dell, Salesforce, Marketo, Microsoft, and IBM. At QuinStreet and Ziff Davis/Salesify, Bob was responsible for creating and nurturing strategic relationships with a variety of best-in-class data and marketing solution providers. He utilizes his Big-Four accounting and Fortune-500 business acumen to create success for all parties.
Article credits:
https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/measuring-roi-on-lead-generation
https://www.act-on.com/blog/in-depth-guide-calculate-your-lead-generation-campaign-roi/
https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-measure-roi-for-leadgen-websites