How will you decide whether the leads you generated have the potential to turn into sales? Or how well do you know the cost per lead of your last lead generation campaign? To achieve revenue goals, it is critical to generate quality leads and realize marketing ROI. It is also important to have quantitative measures that can be used to validate the results.
There are insightful lead generation metrics that you should analyze periodically to facilitate continuous improvement in the marketing & sales functions.
TOP Lead Generation Metrics to Focus On
1. Cost Per Lead
Formula – total cost of the campaign /number of qualified leads received
The cost per lead metric enables you to identify the cost efficiency of your lead generation campaign. Cost per lead data helps in understanding the money spent by the marketing team on acquiring new leads. Organizations use this metric to monitor campaigns, plan new ones, and calculate the return on marketing investment. Care should be taken that this should not be just a data dump or a contact list.
2. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – MQL to SQL
Counting conversions from Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads
This lead metric displays the rate at which marketing qualified leads (MQLs) convert into sales qualified leads (SQLs). An MQL is a lead that is considered to be a converting opportunity. The kind of inquiries that may have asked for a white paper but haven’t asked to be contacted or visited the company website several times to look at the product and pricing page. In contrast, an SQL is a lead that is more likely to become a customer with a specific product/service requirement. Comparing this ratio by lead source (i.e., events, lead lists, lead campaigns, etc.) will help the marketing team to understand which channels work best.
3. Conversion Metrics
Formula – % of revenue through closed leads that originated from the lead generation campaigns
The lead conversion metric shows the effectiveness of the lead generation campaign’s combined efforts. How it impacts the organization’s revenue (vs. MQLs). It’s particularly significant for explaining the ROI on sales and marketing expenses. The percentage of revenue generated through all the lead generation campaigns are calculated to get accurate insights of actual expenses vs. actual profit.
Final Words
Lead generation metrics are essential for lead tracking and future investment plannings on marketing events. For such purposes, l lead management solutions like LeadTalks can help you. Lead engagement can be measured by looking at the number of interactions and media notes (voice, video, documents) in LeadTalks provides the quantitative validation. This way, you can see a clear picture of your lead status, pipeline quality and review expected sales closure numbers. This helps you to better mentor your sales team towards exceeding sales targets or revenue goals.
