Lead generation is one of the toughest challenges for almost all B2B marketers and small business owners around the world. Let it be an independent event planner or a SaaS company with several employees, without cost effective lead generation, they cannot improve the profitability. And so, the average cost per lead is something they all care most about because, at the day end, it’s the ROI that matters. No matter how many B2B lead generation strategies you have in action, if the average cost per lead is unknown, you can never calculate the actual profit.
Without knowing the average cost per lead many B2B marketers spend a lot of time, figuratively, pouring water into leaky buckets. Rather than fixing the bucket, i.e. improving the marketing funnel, they pour more water in the leaky bucket, i.e. they keep bringing useless traffic on the site. Knowing the average cost per lead for your B2B business can help you optimize the process, reduce the costs and increase the ROI and this article will present an overview of the average cost per lead for B2B industries for an idea.
What You Need to Know Before Knowing the Average Cost Per Lead
Successful B2B lead generation companies believe that traffic that doesn’t convert is not useful for your B2B brand at all, and bringing that kind of traffic is a mere waste of server resources as well as marketing campaigns. Moreover, non-converting traffic cause an inflated acquisition costs which will result in higher average cost per lead than your industry standards.
If your average cost per lead is higher than your industry average, it’s obvious that your marketing campaigns are delivering the below-average results. The key fix here will be to rethink your target audience and focus on getting more targeted traffic.
What’s the Average Cost Per Lead for B2B Industries?
The average cost per lead varies from industry to industry and may also differ from product to product within the same industry. Here is a rough idea about the average cost per b2b lead for various industries as studied by HubSpot, which you can use for a reference, but the actual cost may vary depending upon your business model and the marketing strategy.
How to Know the Actual Average Cost Per Lead for Your B2B Business?
To know your actual average cost per B2B lead, do simple math; let’s say you send 1,000 visits to your landing page at a cost of $3 per visit. If your form converts at 1% you’ll get 10 leads at a cost per lead of $300. If, on the other hand, your form converted at 3%, you’d receive 30 leads at a cost per lead of $100. That’s 3X more leads for one-third of the cost per lead without spending a penny extra – just by improving your lead generation form.
How to Improve Your Average Cost Per Lead and Increase Profitability?
So, it is important to convert the existing visitors rather than bring new ones and this is what you call conversion optimization. The biggest culprit in conversion is your landing page. The visitors may not convert because your landing page is not as promising enough as your ad. So, the first step is to look for ideas to improve your landing pages.
But, if you’re sure that you have a great landing page, it must be your forms that are stopping visitors to join in. Forms separate your leads from non-leads and have a huge impact on your conversion rates and overall lead generation results. If you haven’t already, it’s better to optimize your forms as a top priority. Using a tool like Leadformly will ensure that you’re not leaving leads behind from your marketing campaigns.
Summing it Up
The average cost per lead varies from industry to industry and product to product or service to service, and there are various factors that determine the average cost per lead. However, with careful measures and better understanding of conversion optimization, you can always have a lower average cost per lead than the industry standards.