Running lead-gen campaigns is one thing. However, keeping them running successfully is a whole other thing. That’s right; today, we’re talking about how you can monitor your lead-gen campaigns. From setting KPIs, to what analytics tools to use, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get started with lead-gen.
This blog post will walk you through the essential steps when effectively monitoring a lead-gen campaign. Now let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
Why Monitor Your Lead-Gen Campaigns in the First Place?
If you’re asking yourself why this matters, good. You’ve got a little of that product manager mindset in you. However, monitoring the analytics of lead-gen is pretty straightforward. Either way, here are some reasons you may want to start monitoring your campaigns:
- Maximizing Campaign Performance: When keeping a close eye on key metrics and indicators of your campaigns, you gain valuable insights into how they are performing. That means you can more easily identify areas for improvement, optimize your strategies, and ultimately generate better results.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Again, it’s that natural engineer in us that wants to make a data-driven decision. When you have access to real-time data and performance metrics, you can base your decisions on concrete evidence – meaning, again, better results.
- Identify Areas of Improvement: Lead-gen campaigns are not static. What do we mean by that? Your campaigns require continuous optimization to stay competitive and effective. By monitoring your campaigns, you can identify areas that need improvement and then improve them!
- Cost Efficiency and Resource Allocation: By tracking metrics such as cost per lead and conversion rates, you can identify areas where your budget is being utilized most effectively. This allows you to allocate your resources toward the channels, tactics, or strategies that yield the best results.
- Ensuring Lead Quality: Monitoring lead quality allows you to evaluate the quality of leads. This enables you to refine your targeting, adjust your messaging, or optimize your lead generation strategies to attract more qualified prospects.
To learn more about how your campaign is working, you should look at your return on investment. Learn how to do that here.
Monitoring Your Lead-Gen Campaign in 5 Easy Steps
We’ve managed to compile everything you need to know about monitoring your lead-gen campaigns in five steps. Here they are:
Step 1: Set Clear Goals and Objectives
Establishing clear goals and objectives is the first step in monitoring a lead-gen campaign. Frankly, without goals, how do you know what you’re trying to do in the first place?
With well-defined targets, it becomes easier to measure the success of a campaign – and track your progress along the way. But how do you actually set goals?
Well, we recommend setting SMART goals related to what you’re trying to achieve. Ask yourself questions like: are you aiming to increase lead volume, improve conversion rates, or boost lead quality? Once you have set your goals, establish measurable objectives that align with your overall business objectives. For instance, you might aim to generate 100 new leads per month or achieve a 20% increase lead conversion rates.
We dedicated an entire article to just setting goals. Seriously, it’s in-depth. You can read it here.
Step 2: Select Key Performance Indicators
What happens after you set goals? You set key performance indicators (also called KPIs). These KPIs will help you gauge the progress of your campaign to your end goals. Some good examples of KPIs for lead-gen campaigns include:
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads that convert to customers.
- Cost per Lead: The average cost to acquire a single lead.
- Lead Quality: The quality of leads generated based on predetermined criteria such as lead engagement, qualification data, or fit within your target audience.
- Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads that convert into paying customers.
- Lead Velocity: The rate at which leads progress through your sales funnel.
- Lead Source: The channels that drive the most leads.
You can boost your metrics if you know how to sell to your target audience. Learn how to understand your target audience better here.
Step 3: Choose the Right Tools
Now that you have established your goals and KPIs you’ll track, you’ll want to set up your tools. While there are millions of tools out there (each for different types of campaigns), here are some of the tools we recommend:
- Mailchimp: Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms with automation features, customizable templates, and robust analytics to track email performance and lead engagement.
- Eventbrite: As the name suggests, Eventbrite helps promote and sell tickets for your events. It provides lead capture functionalities, event registration management, and reporting tools.
- HubSpot: Of course, HubSpot is one of the most widely used inbound marketing tools on the market. It includes lead capture tools, landing page creation, and marketing automation features.
- We-Connect: We-Connect is the safest automation platform for LinkedIn. It uses a cloud-based system to automate detailed lead-gen campaigns on LinkedIn, track analytics, and save lists of qualified leads.
We love to talk tools. Here are some of our favorite prospecting tools using AI today.
Step 4: Implement Tracking Mechanisms
To monitor your lead-gen campaign accurately, you’ll need to set tracking mechanisms that capture the data you need. If you’re using a tool we mentioned above, it will often do this for you. However, if you’re going the route of tracking these yourself, you’ll need to do some initial handiwork.
Start by setting up conversion tracking on your website or landing pages. This involves placing a tracking code or pixel on your conversion pages to record conversions accurately. Additionally, you can use UTM parameters to track the effectiveness of different campaign elements, such as ads or email campaigns. UTM parameters are tags added to your campaign URLs, allowing you to identify the specific source, medium, and campaign name in your monitoring tools.
Many of the tools we mentioned above track your metrics automatically. From there, you can view the stats and metrics in a dashboard via the tool you’re using. For more info, look at 15 of the best lead-gen tools on the market.
Step 5: Analyze Data & Continually Optimize
As we mentioned at the beginning, regularly analyzing campaign data and generating reports is fundamental to monitoring a lead-gen campaign. Monitoring tools like Google Analytics or CRM systems provide insightful dashboards and reporting features that help you better understand your campaign’s performance.
Start by reviewing your KPIs to assess how your campaign is performing against your goals and objectives. You should analyze metrics like conversion rates, cost per lead, and lead quality to identify areas for improvement.
For a true look into the nitty gritty of your campaign, use A/B testing. We’ve got a guide on how you can use it here.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You are now equipped with the knowledge and strategies to monitor your lead-gen campaign effectively. Remember, monitoring a campaign’s success is an ongoing process, and continuous optimization based on data-driven insights is crucial for long-term success. Stay proactive and responsive, and adapt your strategies to ensure the best possible results.
We think that monitoring a campaign is just as important as the campaign itself. That’s why we bring some of the best analytical tools and tracking to We-Connect.
Find out everything you can do with We-Connect using the 14-day free trial here.