Sarah, the Marketing Director for the Americas, has been given potential additional marketing funding by her manager, the VP of marketing, to help grow the US business. However, the funding comes with a requirement of a 10:1 ROI (that is, $10 of incremental revenue for every $1 of funding). Sarah’s team has a well-oiled marketing funnel with an abundance of data on lead analytics and conversion. She can prove ROI by showing a growth in marketing contribution ($), which she can measure automatically. She now needs to figure out how she would allocate her additional marketing investment. Which lead sources should she overdrive by spending more money on? How should she invest in lead follow-up? How should she resource more to improve lead quality? For making such decisions, Sarah needs further insight into how her lead conversion is performing. She asks Ravi, her marketing operations manager, to use data analytics to uncover further insight into her lead conversion before she feels comfortable making those investments.

This scenario can also be reversed if Sarah’s marketing budget is being reduced during downturns. Where should she reduce or stop her investments while ensuring a minimal impact on her marketing contribution? Which are some of the critical areas of her marketing machine that cannot be scaled back? Ravi’s analysis can also help her make such decisions.

Goal

Analyzing the marketing funnel to identify which type of marketing leads convert better to orders. 

In any marketing engine, lead conversion varies by different lead attributes. Some types of leads convert better than others. If we can identify the attributes of better-converting leads, we can double down on driving those types of leads by changing the lead mix and the associated marketing investment and effort. Such an analysis will also help us identify opportunities for improvement in the marketing funnel. In this analysis, we will see how we can improve the lead conversion rate by identifying lead attributes and opportunities to improve the marketing funnel. 

Pain Points

• How do I allocate my marketing investment? What lead sources do I focus my marketing investment on?
• Leads are stagnating in my marketing funnel. How is this impacting my conversion rate?
• Some leads require a lot of telemarketing / inside sales qualification. What am I missing in terms of lead attributes?
• Why am I not getting enough ROI from certain lead sources?
• What do I need to do in order to enhance my lead quality so that sales views my output credibly?

Idea

Could looking at data from your marketing and sales funnels give you a better understanding of which leads convert well and what can be done to drive up lead conversion?

Decisions to be Made

• Which lead sources to overdrive?
• What steps to take to enrich lead quality before handoff to sales?

Key Stakeholders

• Marketing Managers: Meeting monthly lead targets with lead quality SLAs, allocating marketing investments, and carrying ROI targets
• Inside Account Managers: Meeting order targets with no time to waste on bad leads
• Marketing Analysts: Responsible for data analysis

Hypothesis

Looking at data from your marketing and sales funnels could give you a better understanding of which leads convert well and what can be done to drive up lead conversion.

Learn more about how to prove or disprove this hypothesis in our course Using Data Analytics for Decision-Making in B2B Marketing.