Generating More Leads for Less Money?

Who doesn’t want more for less? Certainly in marketing, we’d all want more leads for less investment. But that assumes the leads are of equally high quality, right? Does anyone want to spend less money to get more poor quality leads? Let’s assume that answer is: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Lead cost is serious business. As often cited, it takes $275 to $325 for a contractor to earn a customer. So how do you balance holding down costs while bringing in quality? Consider these steps:

Measure. What gets measured gets done. You cannot manage cost and quality of leads without some accurate numbers. If you want to determine a lead’s cost, you have to measure where the leads come from. This means tracking paid search leads or online leads, as well as pursuing more hands-on research: asking callers where they heard about the company or the offer they’re calling about.

Divide the cost of the marketing investment by the number of leads generated, and you get a basic cost for each lead. (“Basic” because you can’t always account for how much your TOMA advertising, non-credited referrals and other promotion have kept your name in the market at the time the customer responded to your marketing.)  

Define success. Put meaning behind those numbers. What is a high quality lead worth to you? No two organizations answer this the same way, especially in contracting. It’s imprecise to separate the specific value of a lead from the possible lifetime value of a customer. You could say, for instance, that a lead for a new system is worth more than a lead for a tune-up. Yet we also recognize that over a customer’s lifetime, tune-ups can lead to installations and installations can lead to tune-ups. Additionally, one of the first steps for evaluating the quality of a lead is to distinguish between raw inquiries (which include every contact generated by marketing) and accepted leads, which is the group within that group that is actionable.

Determine the best value. Obviously, the goal is not getting a lead – the goal is getting a sale, which can involve an entire process. Therefore, you need to understand which leads are truly sales-ready, which require significant additional marketing effort, lead nurturing and sales support and which don’t close at all.

In particular, it’s good to identify marketing leads versus sales leads. These have different characteristics. Marketing leads may need to be nurtured and cultivated depending on where they are in the buying cycle. They’re leads that need more information and more time.  Sales leads, on the other hand, are further along in the buying cycle and decision-making process, and they’re ready for the sales team.

While it can be difficult to predict exactly how a lead will turn out, hindsight is 20/20. Look at your past leads to help understand which lead tactics, channels and media are truly valuable and which, even if they are cheap up-front, cost more and deliver less in the long run.

Target effectively. Sharpen your aim. Once you understand the market you’re targeting, build campaigns around those segments – using a mix of offline and online strategies. Remember, it all works together. For example, a Yesmail study found that Facebook campaigns had a 50% lift when supported by email, and a 100% lift when supported by multiple email campaigns. Likewise, Twitter campaigns had a 20% lift when supported by email, and a 40% lift when supported by multiple email campaigns. As a retail example, another study showed that online marketing results in 18% lift for in-store purchases. 

If you need help figuring out the best way to generate more leads for less money, contact a Hudson, Ink Marketing Coach today at coaches@hudsonink.com.