Why you should be measuring lead conversions and not generations?

There are two success metrics in a digital branding campaign – numbers and numbers that make you happy. Using marketing jargons, numbers mean lead generations and numbers that make you happy mean lead conversions. If you’ve been theoretically taught about digital marketing and ad campaigns, we’re pretty much sure that lead generation makes more sense to you because it reflects the efforts you’ve put in on your ad campaigns. But do you know when they actually reflect your efforts? When they convert!

Yes, most of the marketers today are falsely driven by number of leads they’re able to generate in an ad campaign. The likes, comments, shares and signups make them happy. On papers, that’s a great thing! For your business, not so much, because what will feed you is the number of lead conversions! One of the primary reasons why lead generations shouldn’t make you happy is because of the credibility of leads. Personally, I’ve signed up to a lot of ads that appeared on my newsfeed because I found the concept, creative or the copy of the content fascinating. Though I had no purpose of visiting Japan for Sushi festival, I still went ahead and signed up because of the campaign’s fascinating creative. I was a pointless lead at that point of time. The ad agency couldn’t have gotten anything from my lead. Instead, if there was really someone, who was more interested in actually visiting Japan during the festival and if he/she signed up for the event, the lead would make sense to the marketer. See the difference?

The latter is called a qualified lead and lead in the actual sense. He or she is someone who is most probable to pay for your business or service and not me! Such leads help you determine the Return on Investment (ROI) for your ad campaigns and help you refine your target audience. Running a foreign-tour campaign to those who don’t have a passport doesn’t make any sense. In that case, you’re just wasting your time and money.

When you focus only on lead generation, you’re wasting time of your sales associates as well. Due to irrelevant target audiences signing up for your service, the amount of turn downs not just skyrockets but the effort you’ll put in talking to people actually interested will come down as well. That’s why you need to work on increasing your quality of leads; or, in simple terms, lead conversions.

To measure lead conversions, you need to analyze the click-through rates (CTR) of your ad campaigns. CTRs give you the picture of the different phases of your inbound sales funnel and help you come up with rectification measures in each. If you find that the CTR for your ad campaign has been high but there has been very less signups, go back and check where things went wrong. It could be poorly written ad copies, unconvincing creative, irrelevant call to action, lack of drive or purpose or more. When your leads fulfill all of your criteria to read the one single Thank you message in the end, be sure that he or she is your potential customer. The goal here is to not convince everyone to buy your product or service but to retain the one that is truly looking for a solution to his concern. Start working on lead conversions numbers and you’ll understand that generation will make little sense in the bigger picture. Monitor the different metrics, modify, A/B test campaigns, and constantly increase the quality of your leads.

Good luck!