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Managing your marketing agency

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John Cheney (pictured) says companies need to use their CRM systems to measure the quality of leads at every stage of the sales process in order to get best value from the marketing budget or marketing agency.

The way organisations allocate marketing budget has changed fundamentally over the past decade. From the traditional print advertising, public relations and trade shows, today’s businesses are now responding to the hype around inbound marketing and working with any number of agencies for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay per Click (PPC) and social media.John_Cheney

These agencies are, of course, excellent at demonstrating their value to the business, using a raft of measurements to prove the quality of the campaign – from website visits to conversions and brand awareness. These metrics will often look fantastic – and make life far easier for the marketing manager to make the case for additional budget.

But how much impact does higher numbers of website visits have on a business’ top line revenues?  If the CFO turns the tables and asks the marketing team that question most, to be frank, will have little or no concrete information.

Missed Opportunity

Marketing teams are failing to make the essential connection between leads generated and sales made. But go back to first principles. The objective of marketing activity is to generate sales; providing the sales team with excellent, qualified leads that support an effective and productive sales process. It is not to deluge the UK-based sales team with leads that are primarily pan-European or to simply boost the company’s key word ranking. Unless these activities generate more business, it’s pointless.

Sadly, if a marketing team accepts the agency’s digital marketing uplift figures at face value, these are often the results. And this is not the fault of the marketing agency. Without clear, accurate feedback on the value of the leads being generated, the marketing agency can only continue with its sophisticated but scattergun approach.

Tracking Leads with CRMCRM

Marketers need to scrutinise in detail the ‘leads generated’ and determine whether the leads are within the company’s key target markets and geographies; whether they convert into the expected sales pipeline at the ratio expected; and ultimately into closed deals. Companies need to measure, and not just estimate, the true return on marketing investment.

The only way to determine an accurate ROI is to track the leads throughout the sales process. Using an effective CRM system a business can follow the progress of the unqualified leads that arrive at the web site. The first stage is typically Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), those that meet the basic qualification criteria, such as geographic region or size of company. The next stage is usually Sales Accepted Leads (SAL) or Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) that meet most of the normal BANT qualification rules – Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale. Most will then consider a conversion into an ‘opportunity’ for the sales team when all four criteria are met. But, finally, and most decisively, ‘closed/won,’ which enables the finance team to generate an invoice – the ultimate proof of lead value!

Using the CRM to report all the way through that journey provides a clear and accurate measure of the number of unqualified leads generated by the agency that actually resulted in invoices. Critically, by sharing this information with the marketing agency, the company can drive better results. Provided with accurate information about which campaigns generated the best leads, the marketing agency can immediately start to tailor activity and refine campaigns to deliver more of the same and drive up the overall value of investment.

Don’t just rely on Google Analytics

Today, too many marketing departments are happy to measure on the basis of overall lead generation numbers not quality. But believing the information the agency delivers from Google Analytics or search engine result tools is not just short sighted, it is lazy. Marketers need to get real value from an investment in inbound marketing and that means understanding just how those new leads perform. Without this insight companies are missing the opportunities provided by the flexibility and power of today’s marketing tools and constraining an agency’s ability to quickly refine campaigns and turn up the dial on successful content and activity.

Given that many SMEs are spending several thousand pounds per month on digital marketing – many on PPC alone – and a subscription-based CRM system can be acquired for just a few hundred pounds, why are more companies not actively exploiting end to end lead tracking to constantly challenge and improve the quality of digital marketing activity?

Digital marketing offers companies an unprecedented opportunity to measure ROI. By failing to close the loop between marketing investment and sales, that opportunity is being wasted. Without an accurate understanding of the cost per lead, how can a business determine whether the agency is delivering value for money – or whether that investment could be better placed elsewhere?

John Cheney is CEO of Workbooks.

Sally Hooton
Author: Sally Hooton
Editor at The GMA | www.the-gma.com

Trained as a journalist from the age of 18 and enjoying a long career in regional newspaper reporting and editing, Sally Hooton joined DMI (Direct Marketing International) magazine as editor in 2001. DMI then morphed into The GMA, taking her with it!

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