Four years ago, I began marketing enterprise consulting services after spending the prior 10 years in B2B enterprise software marketing. During this time, I've come to believe that the number of leads generated--in a B2B enterprise consulting enviornment--is a terrible proxy for whether our markting department is performing well. Here's why:
We generate an average of 300 names/suspects/potential leads per month through an agressive combination of paid, earned and owned media. Yet over the past 3 years, only one of these leads has genereated a closed/won opportunity in excess of $15,000. In spite of this "low conversion rate," our consulting business has been growing quickly pver the same timeframe. Why?
I believe these 300 new "leads" per month are helping us open, accelarate, and close pipeline. But here's where I'm stuck: how do I measure this? Specifically, the degree to which leads generated and nurtured by our paid, owned and earned media help open, accelerate, and close sales.
For example, a former client of ours calls us up because she has moved to a new job and wants to hire us. 10-20 people who work with and/or for her are already in our lead database and are consuimng our emails, blog posts, webinars, regional events, etc. Six months later the deal closes. How do I prove that these 10-20 people were influenced by our outbound marketing campaigns to the point that they helped accelrate and close this sale?
Would love to hear insights on how others are answering this question.