How to Measure Lead Generation Campaigns and Increase Leads [Full Guide]

Struggling to generate more leads for your business?

You need to measure your lead generation campaign results effectively to be able to improve them.

The thing is:

It’s never about how many KPIs you track because that’s an easy way to fall into analysis paralysis. Instead, you must only concentrate on the primary metrics that move the needle in your lead generation strategy.

This guide will teach you:

The top critical metrics to measure the success of your lead generation
3 deadly mistakes to avoid in your lead generation campaigns
Expert-driven tips and tricks to boost your lead generation efforts

Let’s get to it.

What Are the Most Important Performance Metrics for Lead Generation?

Before we dive deeper into our guide, you must first learn the most important metrics to track in lead generation.

Covering this part first helps you understand why each KPI matters and how it affects your bottom line. That makes the optimization process a whole lot easier.

So…

What should you focus on when measuring your lead generation campaigns?

1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is any lead that has responded to your marketing message but is yet to enter your sales funnel. To illustrate, any website visitor who downloads an ebook, fills a contact form, or requests a software demo is considered an MQL.

Measuring MQL helps you evaluate how interested target prospects are in your company. It’s a fundamental performance metric that directly reflects the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

But here’s the important thing:

By increasing MQL, you’ll hand higher quality leads to your sales team on a golden platter while saving their time. You’ll also speed up the sales process and guarantee perfect alignment between your sales and marketing teams.

2. Number of Sales

It doesn’t take a genius to guess that the total number of sales is essential for measuring lead generation success.

A low number of closed sales indicates a serious problem in your marketing and sales strategies. Because even if you’re generating a lot of leads, other metrics will only matter if you actually close new deals.

The truth is:

Anything can affect sales closing metrics, from your content marketing strategy to lead scoring and qualification. Your sales results are also tightly tied to your lead source as well as your sales and marketing team performance.

That’s why it’s hard to only rely on total sales to identify the issue with your lead generation strategy and solve it.

What should you do instead?

Use “Number of Sales” to calculate other metrics such as closing ratio and sales conversion rate. You can also rely on total sales to compare different marketing campaigns or sales strategies.

3. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors taking a desired action after landing on your website.

For example:

If a landing page on your site gets 1000 visitors a month and 80 case study downloads, your monthly conversion rate is 1000/80 * 100, which equals 8%.

This is one of the most essential and popular metrics for evaluating lead generation effectiveness. It’s also an excellent way to improve marketing and sales performance through testing, tracking, and optimization.

A low conversion rate on any webpage means that your design and marketing offer need improving. By crafting a stronger copy and improving your landing page design, you can make any offer more attractive and increase conversions.

4. Time on Site

Time on site, also referred to as session duration, is the time a visitor spends on your website — from the second they land on your page until they leave.

Obviously…

The more time a prospect spends interacting with your web page, the stronger the impression your company will leave on them. Also, a longer session duration will familiarize leads with your marketing message and offers. So that helps you attract them to your sales funnel more easily.

If your time on site is low, that could mean three things:

Your content is neither valuable nor interesting to your leads
You’re attracting the wrong prospects to your site
Your web pages aren’t providing the best user experience

So…

If you want to improve session duration, your marketing team needs to develop a laser-focused content strategy to attract the right leads. You also need to enhance the user experience on your website by improving both your web design and your marketing offers.

5. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website after visiting a single page. For example, any new prospect that lands on your portfolio and leaves without moving to another page will count as a single session.

You can easily see why a low bounce rate is critical for succeeding in your lead generation campaign. Any qualified prospect that leaves your landing page without moving through more web pages is a huge loss for your business.

This metric is somewhat similar to session duration because they both reflect your content quality and user experience. For instance, a web page that takes too long to load or that isn’t mobile-friendly will push all visitors away.

To check “Bounce Rate” for different pages:

Install Google Analytics to your website and start tracking visitor activity. The tool will give you precise data for each web page, including bounce rate.

6. Return on Investment

ROI (return on investment) calculates whether you’re making profits or losing money on any lead generation program. Basically, it’s a simple metric that helps you determine if you’re meeting your marketing and sales objectives.

ROI= Total generated revenue from leads / Total cost of leads.

Measuring ROI is crucial because it allows you to set realistic expectations for future lead generation campaigns. But more importantly, it enables you to double down on your best-performing lead generation strategies and ignore the rest.

The Three Most Common Mistakes Companies Make in Their Lead Generation Campaigns

When you measure your performance metrics and compare them to industry benchmarks, you’ll realize that there are many mistakes you’re making in your lead generation strategy.

Identifying those mistakes and fixing them is the surest way to fill your pipeline with qualified leads. By optimizing your lead generation strategy, you’ll guarantee that you are making the best out of every business opportunity within your reach.

So… Which mistakes should you watch out for in your lead generation?

1. Not Analyzing Lead Quality

When the lead quality suffers, your sales team will waste countless hours talking to the wrong people. They’ll concentrate on uninterested prospects or gatekeepers that will only slow down your progress.

As a result:

Your sales success will be negatively affected, which you can clearly see in your low conversion rates and declining sales numbers. Your sales and marketing alignment will also suffer and be far from ideal.

So how do you analyze the quality of your prospects?

Lead quality analysis depends on your lead generation strategy and the channels you’re using.

To give you an example:

If you’re generating leads through your website, look at your web analytics to check traffic sources, conversion rates, and other on-site metrics. Having a high session duration, for instance, is an excellent indicator that your content strategy is attracting the right leads.

On the other side:

Your sales team should develop a robust lead scoring system that keeps them focused on high-quality leads and amplify your business profitability. This also helps you guarantee that you’re filtering the wrong prospects as early as possible and honing on decision-makers before your bottom line is affected.

2. Neglecting Post-conversion Lead Nurturing

Attracting leads to your funnel is only the first step in your sales process — so if you stop here, you barely did half of the work. You have to keep nurturing prospects and build lasting relationships with them through relevant content and offers.

Quite simply:

Effective lead nurturing starts with assessing your prospects’ current challenges. Then, you must develop a content plan that addresses all those needs and provides targeted solutions.

What makes lead nurturing such a fundamental step is how it helps you further qualify your prospects. It’s a great way to generate interest in your business and accelerate the sales cycle.

Besides…

A nurtured prospect is almost always ready to convert, which eases your sales reps’ job and gives them an advantage in the deal.

3. Not Tracking Leads Through the Entire Funnel

Salespeople are often tempted to only think about the final touchpoint when assessing sales performance. Yet, having full-funnel visibility is one of the smartest ways to enhance your sales strategy and close more deals quickly.

Here’s why:

Visibility over your entire funnel helps you gain in-depth knowledge about your target prospects and their behavior. More importantly, it allows you to make small, necessary adjustments that have a huge effect on your SDR’s performance.

By having data to rely on, you’ll be much more effective in walking your ideal prospects through the sales journey and pushing them to convert.

How do you implement full-funnel tracking?

Start by defining the essential stages of your sales funnel, which can be divided into multiple sections — including awareness, interest, desire, and conversion. This step helps you stay organized in your analysis and guarantee that you’re not overlooking any important KPIs.

Now:

You’ll track different metrics at each stage, depending on relevance and importance. For instance, you shouldn’t be looking at conversion benchmarks during the awareness stage.

By the same token…

It doesn’t matter if qualified prospects in the conversion stage are opening your emails as that’s not the desired action you’re looking for.

How to Improve Your Lead Generation Campaigns

It’s crucial to be aware of the possible mistakes you’re making in your lead generation strategy.

But…

What’s more important is having many solutions under your belt to overcome any challenges that may come your way.

So in this part:

You’ll learn six fundamental steps to help you improve your lead generation results:

1. Identify Your Company’s Target Leads

Objectives will set your vision.

Each goal you establish will tilt your company slightly in the right direction. Business aims also determine the tools and strategies needed for success and how you can get there.

For instance:

You must define your ideal prospects and the results you want to achieve with your lead generation campaigns. By identifying company goals from the start, you’ll set yourself for success with a clear plan and solid expectations.

Now:

For your company objectives to be efficient, they have to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). You should also break down objectives into short-term and long-term, which is can help you monitor your progress more effectively.

2. Map Out Your Lead Generation Process

Now that your vision is clear, you need to map out a lead generation plan that helps you attain your goals. A strong plan for lead generation is vital for saving time and maximizing your business results.

The first thing you need to work on is your ideal client profile (ICP).

A target prospect is anyone who might be interested in your brand’s products and services. Their profile could include many details, such as demographics, industry, location, company size, budget, etc.

Take a look at your existing client base so you can picture what a loyal client might look like.

Starting from scratch with not much experience in the industry?

It might be a good idea to look at your competition and try to identify the target market they’re focused on. There is always more to learn about your leads by analyzing competitor plans and strategies.

Aside from that, your lead generation plan should also answer these important questions:

What marketing channels should I focus on?
What does my content marketing look like? And how will I promote my content?
Which tools do I need for my lead generation strategy?
How will I measure my lead generation performance?

3. Analyze Your Lead Generation Campaign Results

It’s impossible to develop a perfect lead generation strategy from the start as there are a lot of moving pieces. That’s why you need to be flexible by testing various techniques, assessing your campaign success, and making improvements as needed.

For instance:

Content quality, team performance, lead quality, and marketing channels are all determining factors in your strategy. And you can improve them easily by monitoring results and optimizing your strategy.

There are many metrics and tools to use when tracking different elements of your lead generation strategy. For example, you can:

Assess content quality by looking at website engagement metrics
Monitor lead quality using a lead scoring model and looking at conversions and closing rate
Evaluate marketing channels based on lead quality and your results on each platform

4. Improve the Average Session Duration on Your Website

As we said earlier:

Time on site reflects the quality of the experience that your visitors are getting on your website. And it’s affected by many things, including content quality and prospect targeting.

So to improve your session duration, you need to work on those elements.

For starters:

Your marketing team should conduct thorough research on your target audience to understand their needs and interests. Knowing your ideal leads and where they come from is critical for crafting content and offers they can resonate with.

You must write educational content in an engaging style that keeps new prospects interested. Make sure to provide value with each new piece you publish to establish your brand as an authority in the industry.

And the last part that many companies neglect is user experience:

You must build a visually appealing, user-friendly website that anyone can browse. Improve your overall design to speed up your site and make it easier for visitors to surf through your pages. More importantly, be sure to create mobile-friendly pages that can be accessed using any device.

5. Optimize Conversion Rates

There are a lot of variables affecting conversion rates in your lead generation strategy. Anything from your web copy, site design, headlines, offers, testimonials, and marketing message could improve or decrease conversions.

Here are a few ways you can boost conversions on any lead generation offer:

Create highly-informational content that grabs interest
Write strong supporting copy and captivating calls-to-action (CTAs)
Follow up on leads more regularly with targeted offers
Promote positive ratings and testimonials
Focus on improving sales and marketing alignment

Here’s another secret:

Marketing professionals rely a lot on split testing to optimize conversion rates. So no matter the lead generation channel you’re using, test out different elements, learn from your mistakes, and optimize your final version.

As an example:

You can set up two web pages with the same offer where only a single variable is modified. Send some traffic to each page, then check the web analytics to see which version is yielding better results.

6. Double-check Your Lead Generation Channels

If you take a look at your performance analytics, you may discover that only a few channels are delivering most of your lead generation results.

For example:

You could be focusing on ten mediums at a time. However, only email marketing, LinkedIn, and organic traffic bring you new leads.

If that’s the case for you, you shouldn’t be surprised or worried!

That’s the 80/20 principle in play… For most companies, a small number of lead generation mediums generates the majority of their prospects — sometimes up to 90%.

So:

If you’re wasting a lot of time on multiple mediums simultaneously, you may want to reconsider that and focus on what’s working. This will allow you to significantly cut your marketing budget and concentrate on better lead generation opportunities.

What should I do when a lead generation strategy fails?

“Often, it takes three to six months to optimize a lead generation strategy, especially for B2B companies. In the early stages, generating a steady flow of leads can be difficult because you are finding your market fit, testing variables, and trying different techniques.

If you are experiencing failure in lead generation, we recommend taking a step back and breaking down your strategy piece by piece. Re-evaluate your ideal client profiles, your messaging, and your nurturing process. For a faster resolution, consider consulting with a lead generation expert who can help pinpoint the problems in your pipeline and recommend solutions.

Lead generation takes time to master, but once you have the right strategies in place, you’ll be able to develop a sustainable revenue stream and scale your company.“

Vito Vishnepolsky, Founder and Director

Customers Also Ask

What is a lead generation metric?
Lead generation metrics help quantify and measure the effectiveness of your strategies. By setting goals and split-testing different hypotheses, you can use lead generation metrics to optimize results and convert more leads into customers.
What is the KPI for lead generation?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) for lead generation may depend on the strategy being used. For example, email campaign KPIs include open rate and response rate while landing page KPIs are metrics such as traffic, click-through rate, and session length. However, some KPIs are relevant for measuring your overall lead generation performance, such as conversion rate, cost per lead, and cost per customer acquisition.
What is a good lead generation rate?
While average lead generation conversion rates vary among industries, a good benchmark is 2 – 3%.