It’s no surprise that these days, we have lots of conversations with people about ROI. Marketers, CFOs, and CEOs alike are struggling to figure out the best approach to tracking and computing a return on their marketing and sales investments. But what is interesting is that while there are so many variations of ROI discussions, so many of them have nothing to do with one of the most expensive components in the sales and marketing process-the cost of sales resources.
We often discuss how implementing marketing automation solutions help marketers get more value out of lead generation dollars, by gaining visibility into both working and failing campaigns, increasing the quality of leads provided to sales, tracking ROI related to marketing programs, and much more. But rarely do companies understand the second largest value proposition that marketing automation provides-actually reducing the cost of sales resources.
The idea behind marketing automation systems and processes is that leads today are not what leads were years ago. Today’s leads are mostly just researchers-companies that are still very early in their buying cycle. These leads are not yet ready to be engaged in conversations with salespeople; or if they are, it’s more about educating the lead than the sale of a product or service. Marketing automation systems try to deliver value even before the expensive sales resource gets involved, by identifying “sales ready” leads. And for those leads that are not yet sales ready, these systems nurture those leads-by communicating and educating them on the value of a company’s product or service. These leads are moved along the lifecycle until they are deemed sales ready and can then be passed over to sales.
Obviously, such systems have great impact on marketing departments, since marketing activities have traditionally been the source of large budget items. So, they are always on the line to show ROI for their large expenditures. Marketers must have systems and processes in place to track every lead to every campaign, nurture the leads until they are worth sending to an expensive sales resource, and then follow the lead through the sales cycle (usually they lose all visibility here). To gain a true picture of their effectiveness, they must evaluate ROI on many levels-not just cost per lead or revenue per campaign, but also the impact of their campaigns on the value of the leads-how many quality leads were passed to sales.
Tags: Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Tracking, Marketing ROI
