When running marketing activities for lead generation, the goal sounds obvious – drive more leads, more opportunities and ultimately more revenue for the business. Simple right?
In reality this is often easier said than done. For most B2B brands, buying cycles are complex, involve multiple people and vendor research can often be spread across many months and multiple territories.
This means that although the objective is obvious enough, measuring the true impact of marketing is inherently difficult.
The ‘what does good look like’ question comes back to the point above and in our experience, the first step to a great lead generation marketing strategy is where you have clarity over the end outcome.
With this information to hand, you gain true control. Knowing what marketing drives what type of enquiry, and having the ability to orchestrate your marketing plans inline with what your sales team requires is the absolute golden nugget of B2B marketing.
Measurement for lead generation
With this in mind, how should you be measuring your lead generation marketing efforts? The following KPIs should be front and centre in all of your decision making:
Number of Leads Generated – the total count of leads captured. Use CRM tools, email signups, and campaign tracking systems.
Lead Conversion / Qualification Rate – the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers or meet a pre-defined qualification threshold.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) – the average cost of acquiring a single lead.
Lead Quality – how well the leads align with your ideal customer profile (ICP) or sales criteria. Use lead scoring factors such as engagement levels.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – total cost of converting leads into customers.
MQLs and SQLs – MQLs indicate potential leads based on engagement, while SQLs are leads vetted by sales teams.
Lead-to-Customer Ratio – efficiency of converting leads into customers.
Take Action To Build More Leads
Measuring your activity is the first step towards lead generation excellence, however simply having the right data to hand is only one part of the puzzle. You have to take action!
One of the biggest enemies in marketing is getting too obsessed with theory. Hear me out; knowledge is clearly a great thing and we should of course all strive to be as informed as possible, but knowing the best strategies and shiny new tactics is never going to get you anywhere if you’re scared to make decisions and push things forward.
The thing that’s going to drive real results is the action you take, what you choose to prioritise and how you decide to invest your budget. There’s no silver bullet, no great secrets…if you want to generate results, you must take action and take decisions.
Over time as you gain experience working on marketing campaigns, one of the major things you pick up is the ability to analyze and read data to help you make more informed decisions. Being able to call on previous experience helps to put the data you are seeing into action. You’ll recognise patterns and be able to pre-empt issues before they happen. It’s a great place to be.
If you’re new to the world of marketing, then we’ve found that the following have really helped to support and also force decision making:
Sprints – taking inspiration from the world of agile, the notion of sprints can easily be applied to how you run your lead generation marketing campaigns.
The idea here is that you set yourself a strict time period (say 2x weeks) and assign a small set of priorities to work on. When you get to the end of your ‘sprint’, assess performance, re-prioritise and go again.
I love this way of working because it forces you to move forwards.
Group sessions – even the most experienced marketer is going to find themselves getting stuck from time to time. It happens.
When you are struggling to drive the performance you need, getting a group of people together to review your performance data and discuss ideas can be massively helpful.
Often all that’s needed is a fresh pair of eyes, particularly if you’ve been hitting a wall for some time. Not only will you get fresh ideas, you’ll also now have a group of people that can keep you accountable for any actions confirmed at the end of the session.
Be clear – you should always strive to make things as black and white as possible. When you’re experimenting or making a change to your plan, you should always be as clear as possible on what you are trying to achieve.
For example, let’s say you are testing some new ad creative. First you need to be clear on why. Are you trying to increase engagement or conversions? What KPI are you trying to influence? Pick a number…what should this change achieve?
Be as clear and quantifiable as possible on everything.
Do something, anything – one of the biggest issues to face new marketers is a fear over making the wrong choice.
The truth of the matter is that no one ever knows until they know. So, if you’re looking at data and you’re unsure about what to do next…just pick something.
Sometimes you have to take a bit of a guess on a decision to test the water and see how your campaign reacts. Even if it doesn’t work, you’ll generate some form of reaction that can help inform your next step. As long as you’re being clear and well disciplined with how you are recording results, take each decision as a learning opportunity and you’ll progress so much faster.
So, what does a good lead generation marketing look like? My view is that it comprises of the two areas discussed in this post. First, you have to get as good a picture on your measurement as you possibly can. Secondly, take action and make decisions. If you start focusing on these aspects, your lead generation marketing WILL get better.
Thanks for reading and if you need help with your marketing, please feel free to get in touch for a chat with our team.
