Lead Generation is an ongoing process, requiring frequent analysis.
A functional business stays functional in several ways. One of the most important is the process of gathering, identifying, and nurturing those all-important leads.
Let’s discuss.
Lead Generation involves building interest around your products and services. It also involves nurturing that interest until it converts into a sale.
Lead Generation Analysis, as you might expect, is the process of measuring the success of your lead generation. You then use those figures to improve your strategy.
The first thing to be aware of is that there are actually different types of leads, and they ain’t created equal.
1.Hot Leads – these guys stand a good chance of conversion. They are your most likely leads, who have shown genuine interest in your brand
2. Cold Leads – folks who fit the ideal customer profile, but haven’t yet had any interaction with your brand—like an un-stretched muscle, they need warming up
3. Warm Leads – somewhere between hot and cold leads, lies a secret, third category. These folks have shown some promising levels of interest, but might need an extra nudge from the Sales team to push them over the line into conversion territory
4. Unqualified Leads – a weaker lead, less likely to convert. They might not meet the criteria of your target audience, or might not show the behaviours that generally lead to that final purchase
Lead Generation Analysis is a really strong tool to wield: it helps you focus. Marketing is all about efficiency. Efficient budget. Efficient use of time. Efficient use of materials.
There’s no point throwing marketing materials out and hoping something sticks. That would be an inefficient use of time and money.
By analysing your leads, however, you are able to see those groups of people who are most likely to be interested. You can then focus marketing efforts on those groups, instead of badgering unqualified leads, and hoping for the best.
You can also see where you’ve been successful by setting and measuring lead generation against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Voilà! Efficiency!
This means that lead generation analysis can get complicated. Contrary to what you might imagine, it isn’t just about counting how many leads your brand has gained. It’s more complicated than that. Analysts have to think about quality as well as quantity.
That means they need to measure a few different metrics to get a full picture.
A Lead Generation Analyst is the person responsible for identifying and nurturing potential customers, and understanding patterns in the Lead Gen process.
They bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing, playing an important role in both teams.
Crucially, they analyse the data you collect to find the leads that are most likely to convert, and help you push them over the line.
Their aim? Optimising the Lead Generation process.
Their responsibilities include:
As with most processes, it’s best to start with the big question: ‘Why?’
Why are you looking at generating leads at all? When it comes to leads, what does your business need right now?
Any Lead Generation campaign can have a few different effects. So, ask yourself some questions:
Map out the stages of your customers’ journey.
Once you capture a lead, how long does it take to close the deal and create the conversion?
Understanding this process—its speed, efficiency, and the things that trigger movement down the funnel—is the first step. It helps you understand which level of audience you most need to target, and how to do it. This improves the quality and quantity of your leads.
Your KPIs (the metrics you’ll use to analyse your Lead Generation) should correspond with the section of the Marketing Funnel which needs the most TLC.
Say that you need to focus on customers at the top of the funnel, in the awareness stage. You might set KPIs such as: improved Click-Through Rate (CTR), lower Cost-Per Lead, or increased website traffic. These are all indicators of improved awareness.
In the middle of the funnel, KPIs might look more like improved lead quality (more qualified leads!) or improved email open rates. At this stage, it’s all about nurturing your leads and focusing on qualified ones.
Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, your Sales Team jumps into action. The KPIs to focus on here are increased conversion rates, greater funnel efficiency, and lower Cost-per-Customer (CPC). This stage is where qualified leads become customers, so it’s about how you push them over that line.
Lead Volume: The number of leads a campaign generates overall. This includes the qualified, the unqualified, and the as-yet undecided.
Lead Quality Score: Rank your leads on a scale of your choosing. This ranking relates to how likely they are to convert. More on this in a sec…
Cost-Per-Lead: How much does it cost your brand to advertise to, nurture, and gain a single lead? This is a good indicator of your Return on Investment (ROI).
Conversion Rate: How many of your leads commit to making that final purchase, and therefore become customers?
Lead-to-Customer Ratio: How many leads did you generate in a campaign—VS—how many converted customers did you end up with?
If there are lots of leads, but few customers, that means you’re generating a lot of unqualified leads.
Lots of customers, few leads, means your leads are high quality. Hooray!
Customer Acquisition Costs: How much does it cost to nurture the leads until they make a purchase? All the Sales team processes, the staying in touch, the incentivising. Again, it’s a good way to understand your ROI.
Engagement Rates: Are your leads actively engaging with your content? Responding to questionnaires, clicking things, commenting and sharing?
A high engagement rate indicates high-quality leads. Low engagement rate indicates that your leads are not best-placed to make you money.
Now, for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s time to do the ‘analysis’ part of Lead Generation Analysis.
The best way to analyse your Lead Generation campaigns is to think about both quality AND quantity.
You want to measure their quality score, conversion rate, and engagement rate. These indicate that your leads are qualified or, at the very least, warm.
Quantity, meanwhile, involves thinking about lead volume – how many leads have you generated over a specific period? It’s also important to think about how efficient your funnel is and how much it costs to acquire customers at all.
Here are some equations for you. Don’t say we don’t treat you!
Cost Per Sale = Number of Sales / (Cost of gathering impressions, and generating leads + Cost of follow-up/nurturing activities)
Leads Needed = (Revenue Target/Average Sale Price)/Conversion Rate
Lead Value = Total Revenue Generated from a single lead/Total number of leads
Time to Conversion = Conversion Time — First Interaction Time
Conversion Rate = Total Conversions/Total Leads
Cost Per Lead = Cost of marketing processes / number of new leads
Lead to Customer Ratio = Number of Leads that make a purchase / Number of Leads gathered
There are a few strategies you can use to analyse your Lead Generation campaign.
The first strategy is to have a look at your Lead Scoring Metrics. That involves ranking each of your leads based on their potential value. So, really highly qualified leads might score 5, while first-time visitors might be more like 1.
Lead Scoring Metrics are really helpful. They help your sales team focus their efforts on marketing to the most likely groups.
Secondly, you can have a think about your recent conversions. Analyse your customers’ journey through the marketing funnel all the way to conversion.
Where did they enter the funnel? How engaged did they seem at different stages? Did certain groups show more engagement metrics than others in the middle of the funnel?
Look for similarities such as:
Understanding the shared characteristics of your leads will help you to see which efforts are most successful.
Your leads can be qualified for different aspects of your brand.
An MQL has engaged with your marketing materials. They’re in the awareness and interest stages. They need the Marketing Team to focus on getting all the necessary info to them, so that they travel down the funnel.
A SQL is in the action phase. It’s up to the Sales Team to get them to commit to a purchase.
As part of your Lead Gen Analysis, you want to look at the conversion rate from MQL to SQL – as in, how many MQLs become SQLs. If there aren’t many, or they sign up as leads without ever closing, it’s time to consider the middle stage of that funnel. Are your Marketing goals aligned with your Sales messages?
You’ll have noticed by now that Lead Generation Analysis throws a lot of metrics at you. The ones you choose to measure depend on your business and business goals, as well as your target audience.
But, whatever the specifics, it’s likely to be a few different topics that you need to juggle.
Having automated systems in place to support you—and to help avoid human error—can be helpful.
You might have a system which automatically tracks:
A good analytical approach is to think about both of these.
After all, you can have a large volume of low-quality leads, which isn’t much help, or a few good quality leads, which is.
A rounded approach helps you understand the bigger picture.
Track your leads from the top of the sales funnel, all the way through. Stopping in the middle means you don’t get a full understanding of how—and why—leads become customers. That means you can’t replicate it when you next want to convert some high-quality leads. You’ve got to think about retention as much as acquisition.
Once in a blue moon ain’t gonna cut it.
Look, tracking isn’t always fun, but it is always necessary.
In any case, you should be checking in weekly, or at least fortnightly, with your Lead Generation. This is why automating is so helpful.
It can seem daunting at first, but the thing is, if you track too infrequently, you’ll miss opportunities to optimise as and when said opportunity arises.
Apparently, comparison is the thief of joy. Not when it comes to Lead Generation Analysis!
As you progress, you want to set up analytical benchmarks. That means keeping note of metrics you’ve measured in the past, so you can compare them with every new analysis you run.
Not benchmarking your work is like closing a book without putting a bookmark in. You won’t know where you left off, and that means you can’t see whether you’ve improved. For all you know, you might be reading the same page over and over.
Some leads take longer to convert. That doesn’t mean they’ll never convert at all.
A common problem a lot of brands face is assuming too soon that the long-tail leads aren’t going to convert, and writing the experience off as a failure.
Patience, fellas! Patience! That’s why we suggest you include lead-nurturing metrics (such as time taken to convert) as part of your analysis. That way, you account for the ones who take a bit of extra nurturing to find their feet.
Slow and steady wins the race, and all that. Especially when it comes to competition businesses.
Oh, hey there. Fancy seeing you here. Need a little assistance with your Lead Gen?
You’ve come to the right place.
At Zap, we know customers. We know how picky they can be, but also how good it feels to win them over.
So, if you want a bit of help with understanding your leads, or even generating them in the first place, we’re your best bet. Even if we do say so ourselves.
We’ve made it super easy for you, too. Look. Here’s our number. Beep us.
