B2B lead generation is often looked at as one of the most important, if not the most important, digital marketing activities. However, judging the quality of your marketing efforts by leads generated is often misleading. According to recent research, 98% of leads never result in closed business.
With that in mind, a campaign can be healthy in lead generation but fail to actually add revenue!
By quantifying the actual cost and value of each lead, you have opportunities to optimize lead generation while pursuing leads that are more likely to result in closed deals. That saves you both time and money as you construct more efficient marketing funnels.
Finding Out How Much a Lead is Worth to Your Business
We all know that leads are good, but how much value does each one actually add?
Although this might seem slippery, there is a formula that can help.
It is:
Average Revenue Per Lead x Conversion Rate by Lead Source = Average Lead Value
For example, if average revenue per lead is $1,000 and 0.1% of leads from your pay per click advertising convert, then the average lead value within that channel is $100.
With that in mind, it would usually not make sense for you to pay more than $100 per click. You should focus on channels that offer clicks for less cost – ideally, much less. Depending on the specific channel, it may be possible to capture relevant clicks for only a few dollars each.
Why Lead Source Matters in Determining Lead Value
Your lead sources allow you to use authentic, time-tested data that’s unique to your business, not based on third-party research or industry benchmarks. Each lead source behaves differently and will contribute a different level of value, no matter what the total number of leads captured is.
This comes into play in channels where clicks are much more expensive than you might like – say, $75 in the example above – but the conversion rate on that channel is high enough to more than make up for the difference. This is often the case on authoritative industry platforms.
Applying Your Insights to An Entire Lead Generation Campaign
Assuming your lead attribution is tight enough to tell you where each lead comes from, you can quantify the value of your lead generation campaign by doing the calculations above for each channel that contributed at least one lead to your campaign.
This will not only tell you whether you obtained enough leads to meet your budget and business targets, but where you should look for cost-effective leads when marketing to the same type of buyer in the future. The speed and convenience that data offers will pay off in future campaigns.
Read how Amplify helped North America’s leading automation conference and exhibition generate leads with multi-channel industrial marketing to grow the event to its largest attendance in its history.