Marketers seeking to justify and increase budgets are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness and worth of their programs. Simply measuring the number of leads generated by a marketing campaign won’t give you enough insight to determine the ultimate effectiveness of your marketing program and its impact on the bottom line.
To measure marketing ROI, you need to calculate:
- The percentage of marketing-qualified leads accepted by sales
- The percentage of sales-accepted leads that become sales-qualified
- The percentage of marketing-qualified leads that ultimately result in closed business
To show how marketing contributes to the bottom line, you must get together with your sales organization, carefully define and agree on what you mean by ROI, and align your objectives. Make sure you understand your company’s revenue and sales goals. Determine the number of sales-qualified leads that marketing needs to deliver and how many new leads are generally required to meet that goal. These calculations vary widely by industry, company and competence of both the sales and marketing teams.
For more on measuring ROI, download Silverpop’s white paper, “Show How Marketing Makes Money: A 5-Step Plan for Proving ROI.”
