Diagnose and Optimize Your Lead Gen Engine

Quickly and easily pinpoint any weakness in your lead gen engine so that you stop wasting money and effort on ineffective advertising and marketing.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Quickly and easily pinpoint any weakness in your lead gen engine so that you stop wasting money and effort on ineffective advertising and marketing.

Senior digital marketing leaders are accountable for building relationships, creating awareness, and developing trust and loyalty with website visitors, thereby delivering high-quality, high-value leads that Sales can easily convert to wins. Unfortunately, many marketing leaders report that their website visitors are low-quality and either disengage quickly or, when they engage further with lead gen engine components, they just don’t convert. These marketing leaders urgently need to diagnose what’s not working in three key areas in their lead gen engine to quickly remedy the issue and get back on track, building new customer relationships and driving loyalty. This blueprint will provide you with a tool to quickly and easily diagnose weakness within your lead gen engine. You can use the results to create a strategy that builds relationships, creates awareness, and establishes trust and loyalty with prospects.

Terra Higginson

Marketing Research Director

SoftwareReviews

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Globally, business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketers without a well-running lead gen engine will experience:

• A low volume of quality leads from their website.
• A low conversion rate from their website visitors.
• A long lead conversion time compared to competitors.
• A low volume of organic website visitors.

88% of marketing professionals are unsatisfied with their ability to convert leads (Convince & Convert), but poor lead conversion is just a symptom of a much larger problem with the lead gen engine. Without an accurate lead gen engine diagnostic tool and a strategy to fix the leaks, marketers will continue to waste valuable time and resources.

Common Obstacles

Even though lead generation is a critical element of marketing success, marketers struggle to fix the problems with their lead gen engine due to:

• A lack of resources.
• A lack of budget.
• A lack of experience in implementing effective lead generation strategies.

Most marketers spend too much on acquiring leads and not enough on converting and keeping them. For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them (Econsultancy, cited in Outgrow). Marketers are increasingly under pressure to deliver high-quality leads to sales but work under tight budgets with inadequate or inexperienced staff who don’t understand the importance of optimizing the lead generation process.

SoftwareReviews’ Approach

With a targeted set of diagnostic tools and an optimization strategy, you will:

• Uncover the critical weakness in your lead generation engine.
• Develop a best-in-class lead gen engine optimization strategy that builds relationships, creates awareness, and establishes trust and loyalty with prospects.
• Build profitable long-term customer relationships.

Organizations who activate the findings from their lead generation diagnostic and optimization strategy will decrease the time and budget spent on lead generation by 25% to 50%. They will quickly uncover inefficiencies in their lead gen engine and develop a proven lead generation optimization strategy based on the diagnostic findings.

SoftwareReviews Insight

The lead gen engine is foundational in building profitable long-term customer relationships. It is the process through which marketers build awareness, trust, and loyalty. Without the ability to continually diagnose lead gen engine flaws, marketers will fail to optimize new customer relationship creation and long-term satisfaction and loyalty.

Your Challenge

88% of marketing professionals are unsatisfied with their ability to convert leads, but poor lead conversion is just a symptom of much deeper problems.

Globally, B2B SaaS marketers without a well-running lead gen engine will experience:

• A low volume of organic website visitors.
• A low volume of quality leads from their website.
• A low conversion rate from their website visitors.
• A longer lead conversion time than competitors in the same space.

If treated without a root-cause analysis, these symptoms often result in higher-than-average marketing spend and wasted resources. Without an accurate lead gen engine diagnostic tool and a strategy to fix the misfires, marketers will continue to waste valuable time and resources.

88% of marketers are unsatisfied with lead conversion (Convince & Convert).

Benchmarks

Compare your lead gen engine metrics to industry benchmarks.

Midmarket B2B SaaS Industry

Source: “B2B SaaS Marketing KPIs,” First Page Sage, 2021

Common obstacles

Why do most organizations improperly diagnose a misfiring lead gen engine?

Lack of Clear Starting Point

The lead gen engine is complex, with many moving parts, and marketers and marketing ops are often overwhelmed about where to begin diagnosis.

Lack of Benchmarks

Marketers often call out metrics such as increasing website visitors, contact-to-lead conversions, numbers of qualified leads delivered to Sales, etc., without a proven benchmark to compare their results against.

Lack of Alignment Between Marketing and Sales

Definitions of a contact, a marketing qualified lead, a sales qualified lead, and a marketing influenced win often vary.

Lack of Measurement Tools

Integration gaps between the website, marketing automation, sales enablement, and analytics exist within some 70% of enterprises. The elements of the marketing (and sales) tech stack change constantly. It’s hard to keep up.

Lack of Understanding of Marketing ROI

This drives many marketers to push the “more” button – more assets, more emails, more ad spend – without first focusing on optimization and effectiveness.

Lack of Resources

Marketers have an endless list of to-dos that drive them to produce daily results. Especially among software startups and mid-sized companies, there are just not enough staff with the right skills to diagnose and fix today’s sophisticated lead gen engines.

Implications of poor diagnostics

Without proper lead gen engine diagnostics, marketing performs poorly

• The lead gen engine builds relationships and trust. When a broken lead gen engine goes unoptimized, customer relationships are at risk.
• When the lead gen engine isn’t working well, customer acquisition costs rise as more expensive sales resources are charged with prospect qualification.
• Without a well-functioning lead gen engine, marketers lack the foundation they need to create awareness among prospects – growth suffers.
• Marketers will throw money at content or ads to generate more leads without any real understanding of engine leakage and misfires – your cost per lead climbs and reduces marketing profitability.

Most marketers are spending too much on acquiring leads and not enough on converting and keeping them. For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them.

Source: Econsultancy, cited in Outgrow

Lead gen engine optimization increases the efficiency of your marketing efforts and has a 223% ROI.

Source: WordStream

Benefits of lead gen engine diagnostics

Diagnosing your lead gen engine delivers key benefits:

• Pinpoint weakness quickly. A quick and accurate lead gen engine diagnostic tool saves Marketing 50% of the effort spent uncovering the reason for low conversion and low-quality leads.
• Optimize more easily. Marketing executives will save 70% of the time spent creating a lead gen optimization marketing strategy based upon the diagnostic findings.
• Maximize marketing ROI. Build toward and maintain the golden 3:1 LTV:CAC (lifetime value to customer acquisition cost) ratio for B2B SaaS marketing.
• Stop wasting money on ineffective advertising and marketing. Up to 75% of your marketing budget is being inefficiently spent if you are running on a broken lead gen engine.

“It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic. Correct targeting and testing methods can increase conversion rates up to 300 percent.” – Jeff Eisenberg, IterateStudio

Source: Lift Division

True benefits of fixing the lead gen engine

These numbers add up to a significant increase in marketing influenced wins.

175%
Buyer Personas Increase Revenue
Source: Illumin8

202%
Personalized CTAs Increase Conversions
Source: HubSpot

50%
Lead Magnets Increase Conversions
Source: ClickyDrip

79%
Lead Scoring Increases Conversions
Source: Bloominari

50%
Lead Nurturing Increases Conversions
Source: KevinTPayne.com

80%
Personalized Landing Pages Increase Conversions
Source: HubSpot

Who benefits from an optimized lead gen engine?

This Research Is Designed for:

• Senior digital marketing leaders who are:
  • Looking to increase conversions.
  • Looking to increase the quality of leads.
  • Looking to increase the value of leads.

This Research Will Help You:

• Diagnose issues with your lead gen engine.
• Create a lead gen optimization strategy and a roadmap.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Digital marketing leaders and product marketing leaders who are:
  • Looking to decrease the effort needed by Sales to close leads.
  • Looking to increase leadership’s faith in Marketing’s ability to generate high-quality leads and conversions.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Align the Sales and Marketing teams.
• Receive the necessary buy-in from management to increase marketing spend and headcount.
• Avoid product failure.

SoftwareReviews’ approach

1. Diagnose Misfires in the Lead Gen Engine

Identifying any areas of weakness within your lead gen engine is a fundamental first step in improving conversions, ROI, and lead quality.

2. Create a Lead Gen Optimization Strategy

Optimize your lead gen strategy with an easily customizable template that will provide your roadmap for future growth.

The SoftwareReviews Methodology to Diagnose and Optimize Your Lead Gen Engine

Insight Summary

The lead gen engine is the foundation of marketing

The lead gen engine is critical to building relationships. It is the foundation upon which marketers build awareness, trust, and loyalty.

Misalignment between Sales and Marketing is costly

Digital marketing leaders need to ensure agreement with Sales on the definition of a marketing qualified lead (MQL), as it is the most essential element of stakeholder alignment.

Prioritization is necessary for today’s marketer

By prioritizing the fixes within the lead gen engine that have the highest impact, a marketing leader will be able to focus their optimization efforts in the right place.

Stop, your engine is broken

Any advertising or effort expended while running marketing on a broken lead gen engine is time and money wasted. It is only once the lead gen engine is fixed that marketers will see the true results of their efforts.

Tactical insight

Without a well-functioning lead gen engine, marketers risk wasting valuable time and money because they aren’t creating relationships with prospects that will increase the quality of leads, conversion rate, and lifetime value.

Tactical insight

The foundational lead relationship must be built at the marketing level, or else Sales will be entirely responsible for creating these relationships with low-quality leads, risking product failure.

Blueprint Deliverable:

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Lead Gen Engine Diagnostic

An efficient and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that uncovers weakness in your lead gen engine.

Key Deliverable:

Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy Template

A comprehensive strategy for optimizing conversions and increasing the quality of leads.

SoftwareReviews Offers Various Levels of Support to Meet Your Needs

Included within Advisory Membership:

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Optional add-ons:

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on lead gen engine diagnostics look like?

Diagnose Your Lead Gen Engine

Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and specific challenges with your lead gen engine.

Call #2: Gather baseline metrics and discuss the steering committee and working team.

Call #3: Review results from baseline metrics and answer questions.

Call #4: Discuss the lead gen engine diagnostic tool and your steering committee.

Call #5: Review results from the diagnostic tool and answer questions.

Develop Your Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy

Call #6: Identify components to include in the lead gen engine optimization strategy.

Call #7: Discuss the roadmap for continued optimization.

Call #8: Review final lead gen engine optimization strategy.

Call #9: (optional) Follow-up quarterly to check in on progress and answer questions.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with a SoftwareReviews Advisory analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. For guidance on marketing applications, we can arrange a discussion with an Info-Tech analyst. Your engagement managers will work with you to schedule analyst calls.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Lead Gen Engine Diagnostic

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

The diagnostic tool will allow you to quickly and easily identify the areas of weakness in the lead gen engine by answering some simple questions. The steps include:

• Select the lead gen engine optimization committee and team.
• Gather baseline metrics.
• Run the lead gen engine diagnostic.
• Identify and prioritize low-scoring areas.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Marketing lead
• Lead gen engine steering committee

Step 1.1

Identify Lead Gen Engine Optimization Steering Committee & Working Team

Activities

1.1.1 Identify the lead gen engine optimization steering committee and document in the Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy Template

1.1.2 Identify the lead gen engine optimization working team document in the Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy Template

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Identify the lead gen engine optimization steering committee.

This step involves the following participants:

• Marketing director
• Leadership

Outcomes of this step

An understanding of who will be responsible and who will be accountable for accomplishing the lead gen engine diagnostic and optimization strategy.

1.1.1 Identify the lead gen engine optimization steering committee

1-2 hours

1. The marketing lead should meet with leadership to determine who will make up the steering committee for the lead gen engine optimization.
2. Document the steering committee members in the Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy Template slide entitled “The Steering Committee.”

Download the Lead Gen Engine Optimization Strategy Template