Lead Generation Dashboard: Top 5 Metrics to Include

What is a Lead Generation Dashboard?

(Image Source: Improvado.io)

A lead generation dashboard is a digital interface that shows how your different lead generation tactics and methods are performing. It helps you determine what’s working and what’s not as well as areas that you need to work on to improve results.

Also known as a KPI or demand generation dashboard, your lead generation dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of your conversion rates and the digital marketing channels you are using. 

The data provided by a lead generation metrics dashboard can be used to further optimize and explore marketing strategies.

Today, business growth is dependent on generating new leads online, which is where people spend most of their time. 

With numerous digital platforms available – from forums to social media websites, companies can track every dollar they spent and the actions they took to obtain new and relevant leads.

How to Measure Lead Generation Performance

Many marketers are having trouble looking over available marketing data. With so many demand generation metrics, measuring and tracking can be tricky.

To make sure that you’re making use of the right data, you should first determine the most important marketing goals for your brand.

From there, you can select the metrics and numbers that reflect how you’re able to achieve those particular goals.

Before you dive into niche KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to meet certain marketing objectives, it would be best if you create a framework that clearly shows all your marketing efforts.

KPIs are measurable values that can determine whether your company is performing against your business goals. They can help you closely monitor the progress you’ve made on any goal you’ve set. Regardless if it’s in marketing, sales or other aspects.

Going back, before you explore lead generation performance KPIs, you should focus on the following general marketing disciplines first:

• Lead generation

How do you obtain prospective buyers to your site and turn them into qualified leads?

• Lead nurturing

How do you engage with your leads using messages or content until they become Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)?

• Revenue and marketing ROI

How do you turn your expenses into revenue?

(Image Source: Cumul.io)

How to Choose the Right Lead Generation Dashboard Metrics?

Just like every marketing strategy and method, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all KPI. That’s because every business has varying processes, customers, and goals. This means your needs would be different from other brands’ needs and vice versa.

With these differences, it would also require a variety of approaches when it comes to customer acquisition and lead generation.

So, before you get to the nitty-gritty of data analysis, you should consider several factors first, like your processes, target audience, and business goals. 

When all is set, you can quickly figure out which metrics are vital for your company’s growth.

Here are some things you should consider:

1 B2B or B2C?

Yes, the kind of company you have would greatly affect the lead gen dashboard you need. B2B’s key metrics, processes, and demands are totally different from those in B2C.

At the same time, a B2C blogger that provides online courses will focus on the number of leads. While a B2B company may care more about the quality of leads it generates.

A B2C company might choose social media to generate leads for a new course it offers in a cost-effective way. While a B2B company with a generous budget for lead generation would be willing to spend on a targeted PPC (Pay Per Click) ad campaign.

With the help of PPC advertising, you can divide your audience into particular segments to target them in different ways. Here is some audience segmentation you can perform:

• Past purchases
• Average income
• Age
• Interests
• Gender
• Demographics

This refined and highly targeted approach to advertising is way more effective in obtaining legitimate leads that have more chances to convert.

According to studies, advertisers earn $2 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. It would be best if you take note of those statistics when you begin your brand’s lead generation campaign.

advertisers earn $2 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads

CLICK TO TWEET

2 Upsells, cross-sells and down-sells

A lot of companies are thinking that conversion is the end of the line of a particular customer’s journey. But that’s wrong.

The truth is, the moment you close a sale with a new customer is just the beginning of that journey.

It’s recommended that you exert more efforts in cross-selling, down-selling and upselling. By doing those, you can effectively maximize the CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) of every single lead you have.

Now, maybe you’re wondering what we really mean by that. Here’s a detailed breakdown for you:

Upselling

Upselling is when you offer your client an upgrade or a more expensive product compared to what they want to purchase. For example, if your customer has accepted your free trial offer, you can offer them a premium upgrade, so they can enjoy all the available features.

Cross-selling

In cross-selling, you will be offering products or services that can be relevant to their needs. You should also base your recommendations on the product they’re currently planning to purchase.

For example, if you have a furniture business, you can offer bedside tables to customers who are considering buying a bed.

Down-selling

There are times that your leads won’t convert immediately. When that happens, you can offer them a more affordable version of your product.

For instance, if a possible client was put off by the expensive price of your premium SaaS product, you can offer a customized and cheaper option as a trial.

Perhaps you’re wondering if these techniques really work. Yes, they do work — in fact, a huge company like Amazon has gained $4 billion every year by using these methods.

Amazon has gained $4 billion every year by using these methods

CLICK TO TWEET

4 billion dollars is a big amount of money, especially if all you did was take a step further to make your clients happy?

By incorporating these strategies into your existing sales tactics, you can build a good relationship with your leads even from the first closed sale.

The good thing about these methods is you can also use them to recover a “lost sale”. They can even help you build long-lasting relationships and increase your brand’s average order value.

3 Product type, category, and cost

Let’s face it, most customers consider a lot of factors before making a purchase decision, and that’s as they should. Therefore, you have to put yourself in their shoes to understand their needs and wants. You would want to be on the same page with them as much as possible.

The cost, type, and category of the product can be linked to the frequency of purchase and the total amount spent on every purchase.

That’s why before you go deeper into measurements and metrics, you have to determine the following factors for each of your brand’s offerings:

Product Cost and Margins

If you want to get an impressive ROI from low-cost or low-margin products, you should be able to see a lot! This strategy would require you to generate a high volume of leads and a solid conversion rate.

However, if you prefer a tactic that requires fewer, qualified leads, you can opt for high-cost or high-margin products.

Product Category

Certain categories can provide you with higher sales volumes than the rest or vice versa.

For example, if you’re selling electronic products. Your customer would only purchase a TV once every 5 years but that same customer will be buying a new shirt from a clothing store every month.

So, pick a category that you’re sure to benefit from.

Product Type

Brands that sell luxury items usually offer their products at high costs to ensure profit. That would be necessary for them as they have low sales volume compared to other non-luxury offerings on the market.

On the other hand, recurring purchases like food and products that are bought on impulse like clothing can be sold for a cheaper price.

This means the type of product you sell can significantly affect your entire sales process.

Before you begin building your lead generation metrics dashboard, you can take a look at this Product Plan guide. This can give you an idea of how you identify a specific management role in every stage of the product lifecycle.

(Image Source: ProductPlan)

4 Sales process

If demand generation is your focus, you should keep your pipeline jam-packed with leads. But that doesn’t mean you’re simply going to stop there.

Not having a smooth sales process further down the funnel can mean you’re wasting your money, effort and time on lead generation. You don’t want that!

So before you get excited about your lead generation dashboard, you must inspect your funnel for leaks and plug them. For you to perform that, you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you define clear metrics for your (SQLs) Sales Qualified Leads and (MQLs) Marketing Qualified Leads?
• Do you optimize and automate every phase of your sales funnel?
• Have you mapped out your sales funnel?
• Have you created a clear lead handover from your company’s sales team to your marketing department?
• Do you have offers for every stage of your sales funnel?

Here‘s a quick introduction to the lead generation sales process you can refer to if you get stuck.

5 Metrics to Include on Your Lead Generation Dashboard

Once you’re 100% sure that you understand your organization’s fundamental facets, it’s time to choose the right metrics for your lead generation dashboard.

You could ask, is there a lead generation dashboard template I can adapt for my campaigns?

Well, a lead gen dashboard with the best reporting capabilities must mirror your overall objectives. These determine the lead gen KPIs you should be tracking.

Here are some of the most vital lead generation metrics your brand should be tracking on your dashboard.

1 Click-through rate

This is focused on the performance of your CTA or Call To Action. It can show you how many people have clicked on your CTA link, regardless of their placement (e.g. landing page, email, link or ad).

Normally, a lead generation campaign has various CTAs. This means you should be identifying each element in your campaign.

You should:

• Determine the CTA clicked
• Measure the click-through rate

For instance, you set up a campaign where your ads are sending people to your landing page which offers a free e-book.

So what will happen here is the visitor would be entering her information on your landing page. After that, you will email him asking him to verify his email address. That certain visitor will only be considered a lead once he verifies his email.

In this sample campaign, you have to track three different CTRs:

• CTR for the verification email
• CTR for the landing page
• CTR for the PPC ad

Now, how do you come up with your click-through rate?

Here’s the formula:

(Image Source: SingleGrain)

Here is the lead management KPI that tells you if your lead nurturing efforts are paying off:

2 Conversion rate

The conversion rate is one of the most essential metrics to track on any type of campaign.

But, what is a conversion rate? It’s the percentage of your leads that made particular activities on your landing page, advertisements or email.

Some activities that can be considered as conversion are the following:

• Making a purchase,
• Clicking a button or a link on an email,
• Downloading an e-book or other content your brand offers,
• Subscribing to your email newsletter.

In short, a conversion is basically your campaign’s end goal. But 

remember that it shouldn’t always involve a sale — it can be any goal you think you need to achieve for your company.

To measure conversion rates, you need to perform two things:

• Compute the percentage of prospects who have finished the conversion goal. For instance, it can be the people who verified their email address through the link you sent.
• Define your campaign goal. The more specific your goal is the better. For example, you can set a target of obtaining 50 new leads from your PPC campaign.

The average conversion rate in 2019 is 3.48%.

The average conversion rate in 2019 is 3.48%

CLICK TO TWEET

Here are conversion rates that your brand should keep tabs on through your customer acquisition dashboard:

• Visitors-to-lead

It’s the number of visitors who became leads.

• Leads-to-opportunity

This is the number of leads that are passed to your sales team for nurturing and eventually for a successful conversion.

• Opportunity-to-win

This measures the number of opportunities that led to a conversion

The first metric can help you identify your campaign’s top-of-the-funnel performance. While the opportunity-to-win metric is the one that would indicate whether your campaign is generating great results.

Yes, sure, it’s quite impressive to see on your analytics report that your campaign obtained a lot of clicks, page visits and views. It can make you think that you already have a winning campaign.

However, at the end of the day, it’s the number of conversions that truly matters.

Therefore, you should never lessen your effort on optimizing your conversion rates. Remember that there’s always something that should and can be done.

3 Time to convert

Have you ever wondered how long it takes for a website visitor to become a qualified lead? Well, you can only measure that when you have the time-to-conversion metric.

It’s vital to track the total time of conversion at every stage of your sales funnel. That way, you can get a clear picture of the sales cycle length.

Tracking time to conversion is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is calculate the total time spent by your visitors before they complete your company’s conversion goal. Then, you have to divide that number by the total number of leads you obtained.

(Image Source: SingleGrain)

In running a business, you have to make sure that you provide your customers with a convenient process. They don’t like to go through complicated check out pages — those would turn them off that they might decide not to continue the purchase instead.

In fact, 56% of people who shop online abandon their cart because they’re confused or frustrated with the site’s checkout process.

4 Return on investment

ROI is the most critical metric in any campaign. We may have already stressed the importance of the metrics we mentioned earlier, but ROI is completely different.

To have a better understanding of Return on Investment (ROI), it’s the ratio or percentage value that can offer a solid answer that every investor or C-suite member wants to know.

Is the company making enough money to justify your business venture?

For instance, you’re earning $15 per lead and you’re spending $12 to obtain each lead. That means your ROI is 25%.

However, that’s a very simple example. In reality, you have to go through a challenging process to get an accurate computation of your ROI. It can even be more complicated for brands with complex services and products.

To get a holistic overview of your ROI, you should compute for:

• Total income you can possibly make from each of your clients,
• Total costs of every stage of your sales funnel.

You may want to take note that there are some recurring costs on your campaign. For example, the fees you spend on Facebook ads.

On the other hand, there are also one-time costs, like the money you spend on creating valuable content (e.g. e-book).

Take everything you spend on your campaign into consideration to accurately calculate your ROI.

5 Cost per click (CPC)

Most brands are using advertising to obtain more traffic. So, if you’re using paid advertising, you must put a cost-per-click metric in place.

CPC is the fee you have to pay for every click from anyone who viewed your ad. When you keep track of your paid ads’ CPC, you can determine the total cost of generating traffic.

Although seeing a lot of new visitors from a new ad you created may sound good, you still have to determine whether those leads are turning into paying customers.

You don’t want your CPC to be soaring through the roof when all you get are visitors who couldn’t even be converted into legitimate leads.

5 Best Tools for Building a Lead Generation Dashboard

(Image Source: Kinsta)

Are you ready to create your custom lead generation dashboard?

Here are some services you can use to get started:

LeadFuze

LeadFuze is an all-inclusive dashboard service that lets you monitor your marketing funnel and identify the best strategy for lead generation.

It has a complete set of reports including the number of leads, conversion rates by source (email/social), conversion rate to opportunity stage, revenue per qualified lead, etc. The tool also integrates with LeadFuze CRM to make it easier to track and measure lead flow from all angles.

HubSpot 

HubSpot allows your brand to build a custom lead generation dashboard that can provide you and your team a complete insight into your business’s performance. It contains the key metrics you would need, with tools that are regularly updated.

What’s even more impressive is the data can be easily shared with your entire team. HubSpot can even be combined with other services like Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, and more.

Pardot

Pardot can help you track several CRM metrics and key marketing metrics. Real-time measurement and management of data from your lead database are made possible by this service.

It has custom data requests that you can use to create a lead generation dashboard. Also, it allows you to create custom API queries so you can specify time periods and metrics you want to track.

Marketo

Marketo can help you build a custom dashboard that tracks campaign performance and leads. It can keep you and your sales team on the same page when it comes to marketing metrics that are the core of your business.

Salesforce

Salesforce lets you build a sales lead dashboard from custom fields and reports. This means you’re the only one who knows about the setup of your CRM and the specific metrics you need.

Easily Track Your Customer Journeys With a Lead Generation Dashboard 

One of the most important aspects of a business is lead generation. That’s why you have to make sure that you’re doing it right to ensure that your time and effort are not put to waste.

Although creating a solid lead generation campaign can require a complicated process, it will all be worth it.

Fortunately, you can have a solid foundation to build from when you have the proper metrics. With the data you gather over time, you can build a deeper understanding of your business and your customer’s journey.

A lead generation dashboard can help you keep track of all those data and keep it in one place. That way, you and your team can easily access it when necessary.