If you’re paying for advertising, knowing your cost per lead is a MUST. It is key that you have an understanding of the return you are getting for each marketing dollar spent if you want to hammer down your marketing costs!
Fortunately it isn’t terribly complex to get lead tracking set up. CallRail or What Converts are 2 programs that can be used to track form submissions and unique callers from your website. For non website lead tracking you can easily generate a unique phone number to be used with the advertising campaign. If you’re not already tracking your cost per lead, from paid advertising sources get started now.
But what should a lead cost you?
The answer to this question is a proverbial ‘pot of gold’ at the end of the rainbow.
Or ‘greener grass’ on the other side of the fence.
Even if you are tracking your current lead cost, there’s always someone claiming to do better and get leads at a lower cost.
I know I see it in my Facebook feed with people selling marketing services; big bold claims of ‘How I Got 200 HVAC Leads in 1 Week for Only $400’… backed up by some case study.
Here’s the kicker; assuming the case study is real, the results are likely what statisticians would call data-mined and not robust. In other words, to generate the case study and bold claims; 1 specific time frame was used, and the market was likely carefully chosen. These results would not be expected to be duplicated.
For example, with regards to an HVAC lead generation campaign, a sample from a company in Miami would get much lower cost per leads and a higher quantity on a week in August (hot and humid time of the year) than they would on a week in January (temperate season).
The branding of the company can also make a radical difference.
Consider my company which has been running Facebook ads for years. The audience we target with Facebook ads has seen us in their Facebook feed time and time again. They know us. They’ve been subjected to our trust building ads. We’re still here. Any lead generation campaign we do will result in a lower cost per lead than a company that has never had exposure to that audience.
At the end of it all, the only thing you can truly use as a benchmark to your lead cost, is your own cost per lead. Quit worrying about how everyone is getting their leads so cheap, and focus on yourself. Benchmark your lead cost, and then look for ways to lower your own cost per lead, relative to your current results!