WhatConverts
Avatar photo Amanda Pell
|
Oct 18, 2024

Finding the right lead generation KPIs can be tricky. Many people fall into the trap of confusing marketing metrics with lead generation metrics, which is an easy mistake to make, especially since they do overlap.

But marketing KPIs alone can only demonstrate how well your marketing is performing. What matters to your clients and stakeholders is whether that performance is having an impact—whether or not it’s moving the needle to help accomplish the business’s broader goals.

In order to prove that your marketing is making a difference, you need lead generation KPIs that tie your marketing efforts to business value.

What to Look For in a Lead Generation Metric

When it comes to choosing lead generation KPIs, you want to focus on metrics that can answer two key questions:

  1. Is your marketing working?
  2. Is your marketing worth what it costs?

Be careful not to lose sight of the bigger picture—when we say that your marketing is “working” in a lead generation context, we’re not talking about whether or not an individual landing page, or ad campaign is meeting its milestone objectives. What we want to know is whether your marketing as a whole is working on a macro level and adding significant, measurable value.


Of course, you’re not going to want to throw away your marketing metrics entirely. In fact, some marketing metrics are essential to calculate lead generation KPIs.

3 Marketing Metrics to Keep

Marketing metrics can’t prove lead generation value, but they do lay an essential foundation for more impactful, value-focused reporting.

Marketing KPI #1: Total Traffic

Remember when the early days of social media when “going viral” was the holy grail of marketing? It didn’t take long for companies to figure out that millions of views don’t automatically result in millions in revenue—and in fact, they often translate to very little revenue at all.

The same principle applies to website traffic. Getting people to your site is important, and traffic data is essential to help marketing teams determine whether individual pages and campaigns are working, but traffic only translates to business value if it consists of people who are likely to eventually become customers.

Marketing KPI #2: Conversions

If traffic is about getting people through the door, conversion rate is about convincing them to stay and shop. It’s a critical metric, but it’s not the end of the story. Bringing people in to browse is important, but only if a decent percentage of those browsers ultimately make a purchase.

Interpreting conversion data can be tricky. At first glance, a higher conversion rate would seem to indicate more successful marketing. But a high conversion rate on low-quality traffic is far less valuable to a business than a smaller number of conversions on highly qualified visitors.

Marketing KPI #3: Total Leads Generated

Hang on a minute—if we’re talking about lead generation KPIs, how is total leads generated not at the top of the list?

It’s true. Just like conversions can give a false impression of success if the quality of the converted traffic is low, total lead count is only valuable if the leads are legitimate and likely to ultimately become customers. Without quality control, a high number of leads generated could represent a huge success or a huge pile of what basically amounts to spam.

3 Lead Generation KPIs that Prove Marketing Value

Basic marketing metrics are still critical to your reports, but it takes more to prove to clients and stakeholders that your marketing efforts are providing value. Lead generation KPIs go beyond surface-level performance indicators to demonstrate real business impact. They're the difference between showing that your marketing is busy and proving that it's effective.

Lead Gen KPI #1: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

You may have noticed that the common theme across our three marketing metrics was a lack of quality control. They may measure how many people your campaigns brought in, but they don’t demonstrate how many of those people are the right people for your business.

That’s where marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, comes into play. MQLs are the leads that match your ideal customer profile and have shown some interest in what your company offers. If conversions are browsing shoppers, MQLs are browsing shoppers that actually have a need for the products or services your company sells.

Lead Gen KPI #2: Quotable Leads and Quote Value

So you’re measuring MQLs and finally starting to prove that your marketing is bringing in truly qualified leads that are likely to make the company money. By tracking quotable leads, you can take things one step further by measuring just how much money those MQLs are worth.

Quotable leads are similar to, but more specific than, MQLs. Whereas qualified leads simply meet the necessary criteria to be included in the company’s ICP, quotable leads have provided enough information to determine what product or service they’re interested in. This gives you a dollar amount, or quote value, that this lead will be worth if they’re successfully converted into a customer.

Evaluating leads to determine whether they’re quotable should be a regular part of your leads management process. Vetting your leads as they come in will help you make more informed decisions and optimize your campaigns to bring in more valuable leads.

In WhatConverts, you can configure your Lead Manager to collect and display key data points for quicker lead evaluation—and on an Elite plan, you can use our AI-powered Lead Intelligence feature to set up rules and automate the lead evaluation process completely.

Lead Gen KPI #3: Cost Per Lead (CPL)

With quotable leads and quote value, you’re now able to prove the value of your marketing down to the cent. But in the same way that a business cares more about profit than pure revenue, your stakeholders need to see that the value of those leads is greater than the cost of acquiring them.

Cost per lead is calculated by dividing your total marketing spend by the number of leads generated. Bringing in high-quality leads is great, but bringing in high-quality leads at a low CPL is even better. The key is to make sure that you continue to prioritize quality over cost savings—a low CPL isn’t better if it results in a higher volume of low-quality leads.

The Ultimate Lead Gen KPI: Return on Investment (ROI)

Each of the KPIs on our list is important in its own way, but ultimately, all metrics lead up to the most important KPI of them all: return on investment. ROI is the only metric that can truly answer the two questions we started with:

  1. Is your marketing working?
  2. Is your marketing worth what it costs?

Return on investment is calculated by comparing the total value of leads generated against the cost of acquiring them. The beauty of ROI is that it combines all of the other metrics we’ve discussed into one clear, bottom-line figure. It takes into account:

  • The quantity of leads, as measured by total leads generated
  • The quality of leads, as measured by MQLs and quotable leads
  • The potential value of those leads, as measured by quote value
  • The cost of acquiring those leads, as measured by CPL

By prioritizing ROI as your north star metric, you’re not just showing that your marketing is generating leads or even potential sales—you’re showing that it’s generating more value than it costs.

Of course, KPIs only matter if they’re measured accurately and with complete and comprehensive data. That’s where WhatConverts comes in. By tracking leads from their first touch point all the way through to sale and allowing marketers to assign and update values for each lead, WhatConverts provides the comprehensive data needed to compute a true and accurate ROI for your marketing efforts. With this level of insight, you can optimize your marketing strategy continually, focus resources on the channels and campaigns that deliver the highest return, and ensure that your marketing reports continue to impress.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

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