Blog entry excerpted from the Marketing chapter written by Jennifer Beever in The Book on Business from A to Z
B2B marketers need to track lead quality as well as lead quantity. Marketing is a numbers game, right? Fill up that pipeline and increase sales!
Not exactly. It is important to track the quality of your leads. One way to measure this is by tracking the conversion rate of leads by source. You could do this in something as simple as a spreadsheet. Capture each marketing activity, its cost, leads generated, number of sales and sales revenue generated. Calculate your conversion rate as the ratio of sales to leads. Then, create a comparative graph that shows cost per lead compared to conversion rate.
You might be surprised by this kind of analysis. The graphic below illustrates a real example. This is the comparison chart that I produced in Excel. A manufacturer thought that print advertising had a greater return on investment (ROI) than trade shows. The trade shows were expensive, not only in fees charged to exhibit but also in people travel and attendance time. They were seriously considering dropping them. But a comparison of cost per lead and conversion rate showed that cost per lead for the shows was much lower than the ads, and the conversion rate of over 50% far exceeded the mere 12% of the ad conversions.
Think you know the marketing answers? Make sure you have the right numbers to back them up.
