The metrics marketers need to improve lead generation

New technologies and industry disruptions have changed the game in lead generation. In the past, companies relied on large conferences and expos to put their product in front of people in targeted locations and industries. With these large events fewer and further between, companies have an opportunity to turn that budget towards digital communications,¹  which can be targeted and personalized for even greater effect.

A good lead gen program will shorten your sales cycle by increasing the number of verified, in-market leads. It helps you separate the wheat from the chaff– in other words, to determine which leads are ready for a sales call and which ones are only browsing and not likely to actually convert.

So what do you need to keep track of?

There are quite a few ways to measure success and we’ll discuss some of the metrics we find the most compelling. But of course the most important thing is for you and your team to identify which metrics are the most important for your team, product or campaign goals. Find one metric² that would prove the success of your concept. If you’re aiming for brand visibility, what would prove your campaign has succeeded? View that metric as the main event, and the other metrics as smaller events that support the main one, like an opening number before the headliner at a concert.

Web Insights

In order to know what you need to change, you need to know what’s happening.

• Web traffic – Track where your traffic is coming from so you know where you can improve or capitalize on current efforts.
• Bounce rates – A lower bounce rate is generally preferable, but not always. B2B companies have an average bounce rate at 65%.³
  Higher bounce rates may indicate that you’ve provided the right information quickly. A low bounce rate might mean people are reading through a menu or article and taking their time. It just depends what you hope they are doing on that page and whether the bounce rate reflects that success or failure.
• Visibility metrics like keyword ranking – Keywords can indicate how close customers are to buying. And if your site is optimized well, you might be featured on a google search result snippet that shows a quick, immediate answer to a customer query. Placing in one of these spots can double your click through rates and boost website traffic.

If you have a CRM and can track your customers more closely, you can personalize messaging in future communications with those prospects. Creating an integrated, omnichannel experience for your customer starts and ends with data–what’s actually happening and what you want to happen. Strengthen your demand generation with inbound marketing and content marketing that supports your goals based on the web insights you’ve gotten.

Volume of Quality Leads

B2B sales rely on quality, not quantity. This is where you can identify the quality of the leads you’re bringing in, and create highly personalized campaigns.

• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – SQLs are people who have interacted with your materials and have indicated they’re ready to become a paying customer. Make sure you can identify these leads so that you can promptly turn them over to your sales team. These are decision makers, and people who may want to talk through specifics or adjustments they’ll need for their specific situation.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – MQL’s are people who interact with your materials but are not ready for a sales call. They could be assistants who research your product in order to present it to their boss, for instance.
• Product Qualified Lead (PQL) – These are people who have interacted with your product and are ready to become a paying customer. Free trial period customers, or people who used your service at another company and are advocating to use your service in their new workplace would fit here.

A data partner can not only help you verify these leads – for example Data Axle provides 100% verification of every lead – your data partner can help you dig deep into these leads. For instance, B2C Link cross references your leads’ positions in their professional lives with aspects of their personal lives so you can target decision makers who value what you have.

When you can identify MQLs, you can then track and quantify the percent of MQLs who turn into SQLs, or what percentage of MQL’s convert to paying customers. The more qualified your leads, the more likely it is you will be able to convert and shorten your sales cycle.

Return on Investment

Use these metrics to adjust your course as you go and hopefully show a high ROI at the end of the campaign.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL) – Divide your marketing spend by the number of new leads you have within a timeframe. This can show you which channels are more cost effective than others at lead generation so you can focus on the channels that work.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) – This can be an early metric to gauge how a campaign is going, and how engaging your creative copy is, how well placed it is, etc. You may find that simply editing your CTAs drives more clicks and more leads.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Find the CAC by dividing marketing spend by the number of new customers who came from that campaign. Strive for this metric to be as low as possible so you can show decision-makers that you’re staying within budget and have a good ROI.
• Average Revenue per Customer (ARPC) – When everything is said and done, how much are customers actually spending on average? If customers have an average revenue of less than you spent bringing them in, that’s a red flag and unsustainable.

How much did you spend in the various areas of your campaign and marketing efforts? When you can break down your budget and results into these kinds of categories, and when you can track these metrics, you can show your company how different tactics lead to better outcomes.

How Data Axle can help

Data Axle provides end to end lead generation help so marketers can acquire, reactivate and upsell customers. Ask us about how we leverage data to take your lead gen campaigns to the next level.

_{¹ https://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/sales-enablement/guest-article/2021-will-be-the-year-of-b2b-lead-generation-democratization/
² https://komarketing.com/blog/tracking-b2b-lead-generation-metrics-in-a-changing-environment/
³ https://www.siegemedia.com/strategy/bounce-rate}