It’s astonishing how many companies throw money at their marketing campaigns without measuring the prior initiative’s reach, reception, or return on investment. The collective result of this egregious level of waste is $611 billion per year. That’s right, a whopping $611 billion per year is wasted in the US on poorly targeted digital marketing campaigns. 

It doesn’t matter how good a product is or how easy a service is to sell, if you aren’t leveraging existing data to drive informed marketing campaigns, you are undoubtedly working in circles while throwing darts in the dark. There is entirely too much data available today to engage in uninformed marketing strategies.  How can you be sure you’re reaching the target market? How many leads did the last marketing initiative bring in? How many were qualified? What was the average lead lifecycle?

If you're stuck in the endless loop of failed or unmeasured marketing initiatives, keep reading to learn how to leverage existing data to drive informed decisions that will grow your business and boost your marketing department’s ROI.

What does it mean to leverage data?

By definition, leverage means to use (something) to its maximum advantage. By leveraging existing data, you effectively maximize existing resources to minimize work and worry. 

To go a step further, if you can’t easily answer the following questions, then you are not leveraging data effectively:

• What does the data tell you about the current customer journey?
• Where are you the best customers coming from?
• Do seasonal, regional, or pop-up sales drive business exponentially more business?
• What does the data say about the success of current marketing efforts?
• Which channels are cost-effective? Which channels are not providing an optimal return on investment?
  

Believe it or not, if you have access to Google Analytics, Google Search Console, a CRM, the PowerChord lead management platform, and/or current sales reports, you are sitting on a wealth of data that can drive some of the most lucrative decisions you will make this year. 

Understanding existing data points

Farming existing data points for information is both enlightening and inspiring. The things you can learn about your digital footprint from Google Analytics include how well the website is performing, how well the available information resonates with your audience, and even how well a current marketing campaign is working toward current goals. A few great analytic data points to look for include Acquisition and Behavioral analytics.

1. Acquisition metrics: ‍

A key component of site analytics is how many people visit the site and stick around. User metrics help build out a profile of a typical site visitor and demonstrate if you are reaching the target audience. Three key types of metrics are included with user metrics: new users, users, and sessions. 

• New users - this number indicates how many users have visited the website site for the first time
• Users - the count of unique visitors to the website
• Sessions - the total number of times a user visits the site within a window of time without being idle for 30 minutes, as identified by a browser cookie
  

Pro Tip: An awareness campaign might generate a large number of new users, while a remarketing campaign will drive higher numbers of sessions. Knowing the goal of each campaign is essential to evaluate these metrics. New users indicate the quality of your marketing efforts outside of the website, while users give an idea of how effectively you could engage those visitors during their first visit (the more engaging the site is, the more likely visitors are to return). Site sessions can be an important indicator of effective campaigns on directing users to the site. 

‍         2. Behavior metrics:

Behavior metrics show the actions visitors are taking on the website: How long are they visiting the website? How many pages are they viewing before leaving or filling out a lead form? These behaviors can provide valuable insight into site visitors to help determine how engaged they are with the content on the sites and more. The actions of users can be used to identify any customer journey or audience targeting issues. If users are getting to the site and immediately leaving, this could indicate that digital marketing may not be reaching your ideal target audience. Additionally, these metrics should be used in conjunction with conversion metrics, as this can also point to how quickly leads are converting. 

• Pages/Session - the average number of web pages a user views in a given session on the site
• Average Session Duration - the average length of time a user spends viewing the site
• Bounce Rate - the percentage of site visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page

       3. Conversion metrics: 

There are a multitude of conversion metrics that can be tracked but the top four that should always be monitored closely are:

• Lead Forms - The number of forms submitted by interested users on your site. This information is excellent for tracking conversions from qualified leads.
• Click-to-Call - The total number of clicks on your business phone number to get in touch with you.
• Get Directions - The total number of times a user has clicked to get directions to your dealer location.
• Engagements - A user action that increases the probability of future interactions with your site. This sum includes leads, clicking to call, clicking to email, clicking to get directions, and clicking to a dealer site.
  

*Shameless Plug: At PowerChord, we took analytic reporting a step further with our conversion metrics located in our real-time analytics reports. 
PowerChord’s Command Center does a great job tracking all of your important data points so you don't have to pull multiple reports. The time we save you alone pays for the platform.

Leveraging Sales Data

It's time to pull out recent sales reports to find data points needed to answer the following metrics on lead velocity, conversion rate, and sales velocity. These formulas are used by the marketing pros to tell the tale of the customer journey, lead lifecycle, current and future revenue potential, and the overall health of your current pipeline.

LEAD VELOCITY RATE (LVR)

Lead Velocity Rate measures the real-time month-over-month growth of qualified leads coming into your pipeline. LVR uses real-time data unaffected by fluctuations often found in revenue-related metrics. As a result, you can constantly keep your finger on the pulse of your qualified pipeline and future sales revenue potential. In addition, when the lead velocity number drops below the prior month’s, you can take immediate steps to rectify the deficiency, whether that be through working hard the following month to generate more qualified leads or further drilling down to find the source of the issue.

Lead Velocity is calculated by subtracting the number of qualified leads last month from the number of qualified leads this month. First, divide the answer by the number of qualified leads, then the previous month, then multiply by 100 to calculate lead velocity percentage.‍

CONVERSION RATE

The conversion rate, also known as the win rate, tells the tale of not only the current lead lifecycle but also the ratio of qualified leads to eventual sales. Smart marketing teams and CMOs widely use this metric. To calculate your current win/conversion rate, divide the number of closed sales during a specific timeframe by the total number of current leads during that same timeframe. Multiply this number by 100%

Conversion rate = Total conversions during a specific date range/total leads during that same date range * 100%

SALES VELOCITY RATE (SVR)

Sales velocity rate measures how quickly sales move through the sales funnel. To fully explain the sales velocity rate concept, it’s important to break down what each data point needed for the equation means, and how it plays into your sales velocity rate and bottom line.

Number of Opportunities - Opportunities are qualified leads. Therefore, only qualified leads should be used when calculating sales velocity. Check the data for how many qualified leads are currently in the funnel. Note: It does not matter where those leads are in their lifecycle - what matters is that they are solid qualified opportunities to increase revenue.

Deal Value - This is simple, how much is the deal worth? How much revenue is made from each sale? If you sell something with a fixed price, this will be an easy metric to pull. However, if you have varying price points, you will need to create a few different calculations for accuracy relative to each price point.

Win/Conversion Rate - Since conversion rate was covered already, let’s skip to a recap of how to identify win rate - divide the number of sales won by the total number of sales opportunities.

Length of Sales Cycle - This one is self-explanatory - how long does it take to make each sale? What’s the average time? Days, Weeks, Months? The goal of any sales cycle is to fully optimize the customer journey to shorten the sales cycle as much as possible. Plus, the shorter the sales cycle, the faster the sales team can move on to the next qualified lead. 

Sales Velocity = Number of Opportunities x Deal Value x Win Rate / Length of Sales Cycle

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Being an award-winning lead distribution and lead management platform, PowerChord knows the importance of leveraging data to grow your business. We strive to provide as many insights necessary to optimize sales and marketing initiatives, enhance customer journey, and help maximize return on investment (ROI) for both our platform and your marketing efforts. To learn more about the platform, book a free demo today.

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