The Client Who Needed More Leads

“What we need is more leads. Right now we’re doing X per month, but we need twice as many from next month onward."

“Double the leads?" we asked. “Is that based on anything? Audience size, impression share, or…"

“No," they said. “That’s just our new target. And we need better quality leads too. Right now the conversion to sale is 60%. Our new target is 90%."

Double the leads and a 50% increase in conversion to sale? It sounded like someone had done some magical spreadsheet calculations.

“Alright, so which channels bring in most leads right now, and have the highest conversion rate?"

“We don’t know. We do search and display with Agency A, social is done by Agency B and there’s also Agency C doing something with social."

We asked some more questions. There were no answers. Couldn’t get access to Analytics. The Agencies mostly used their own landing pages and wouldn’t share much in terms of insights, apart from a pretty PowerPoint with some random numbers in green.

The setup was all over the place. Leads came from anywhere and nowhere. By the time they got into the CRM for follow-up by the sales team, it was unclear what channel or campaign had generated the lead. It was impossible to determine cost per lead, cost per sale or ROI on any digital campaign.

It wasn’t for the lack of tooling. The client was using a leading CRM system with an advanced marketing module. The setup was done by an external consultant and the client wasn’t keen on doing anything in the configuration of said system, afraid or more invoices at a ridiculous external consultancy rate.

“So, how should we do this?" they asked at our next meeting.

“We’ll need to fix the basics first. We need to set up proper end-to-end tracking. Once we can determine what channels bring in the best quality leads and at what costs, we know where there’s room to scale.

“Once we can determine the biggest drop-out points in your funnel, we can start nurturing and improving where it actually matters.

“Without that, we would just be firing shots in the dark."

We suggested structuring the setup, fixing the attribution issues. Proper tracking throughout the whole funnel for the different channels, suppliers and campaigns. A simple dashboard to combine all relevant metrics from the different tools, to have the complete picture in one simple overview.

“Once that is in place, we’ll know where to start and generate more and better quality leads."

They were quiet for a bit.

“Hmmm," they said. “Yeah. Well, we don’t really want all that. We just need more leads. Can’t we do something with e-mail?"