In today’s modern digital marketing environment, it is important to spread your marketing efforts across multiple channels; however, all marketing tactics are not serving you equally. To gain the most from your limited time and marketing budgets, measurement is key.
Two common problems we see all too often when working with our clients include not measuring the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns and failing to ask which specific marketing activity brought each lead to your organization.
We recommend using your leads as the unit of measurement to track your marketing performance. With discipline, it’s easy to track your leads by channel and monitor your marketing spend allowing you to calculate your cost per lead.
Why is cost per lead so important? Because marketers must ensure the cost to acquire a lead is less than the monetary value the lead can bring to the organization!
Here are four steps for tracking and capturing the right information so you can calculate your cost per lead:
- Track your leads. Create a system to track inquires, making sure to segment by channel. Train your staff on lead tracking, especially your sales and marketing team. Tally up the count each week.
- Track metrics from your marketing efforts. Make sure what you’re tracking is meaningful. Monitor key performance indicators that are important for each channel and keep track of your budget per channel.
- Do the math: cost per lead = total marketing spend/ total leads gained
- Make adjustments based on your data. Constantly shift budgets toward the most effective tactics.
Without these critical numbers you cannot truly evaluate the success of your internal marketing department or the agencies you use. And by consistently monitoring results – once you commit, stick with it – you will create a culture within your organization that results matter. If the agency you work with is anything like our team, they’ll want to know which tactics are bringing your community the most and the best quality leads. Paying attention to the cost per lead data is extremely important to so you know where to invest and gain the highest ROI.