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Need help seeing results from your marketing campaigns? You need to begin tracking the right demand generation metrics. They help you know what's working at each marketing stage—from initial brand awareness to customer retention.
While there are numerous metrics that you can track, let's explore the 12 most important demand generation metrics you must consider tracking. From website traffic to content engagement and beyond—we'll cover the key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow you to:
- Identify bottlenecks in your marketing processes
- Prioritize high-impact campaign strategies
- Continuously optimize based on actionable data
- Prove and improve marketing's impact on revenue
Let's get started.
Top 12 Demand Generation Metrics
Rather than tracking every metric under the sun, it pays to focus on a targeted set that will give you true insight into your marketing efforts. We'll split them into sections of the B2B sales funnel—top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, and post-conversion metrics for simplicity.
Here are the top 12 metrics you must track for better demand-gen marketing.
Top-of-the-funnel metrics
The top of the funnel is all about driving awareness and interest in your brand. To measure effectiveness at this stage, focus on these key metrics:
Website Traffic and Unique Visitors
Your website traffic shows the total number of sessions or pageviews on your site over time. The unique visitors metric represents the number of new people who have come to your website within a designated time frame.
When both metrics are tracked together, it gives insight into how well your campaigns expose your brand to fresh audiences and drive engagement.
For example, if you drive 5,000 visits and 4,000 unique visitors in a month, it tells you your traffic sources are introducing 1,000 repeat visitors along with 4,000 new people to your site.
This analysis helps you identify which channels excel at attracting relevant new visitors vs. repeat traffic. You can then focus efforts on high-performing channels for new visitor growth while phasing out ones only to drive repeat traffic.
Landing Page Conversion Rate
Your landing page conversion rate is the percentage of visitors completing your desired goal action on your landing page, like downloading content or signing up for a demo. For instance, if you get 300 downloads from 1,000 visitors, your conversion rate is 30%.
Landing Page Conversion Rate: (Total conversions / Total visitors to the landing page) x 100
You can test different elements on your landing pages, like copy, visuals, and calls to action, to refine them for higher conversion rates over time. With an analytics tool like Factors, you get the insights necessary for optimizing your funnel for better conversions.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the ratio of users who click on your ad or content compared to the number who saw it. For example, if your ad gets 300 clicks after being seen 1,000 times, your CTR is 30%.
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CTR: (Total clicks / Total impressions) x 100
CTR indicates how well your ads perform. If more people click on your ad, it reaches the right people and resonates with them. So, it makes sense to monitor CTR by campaign, ad group, and keyword to identify high-performing content.
Middle-of-Funnel Metrics
Once you've attracted visitors and converted them into leads, it's time to begin nurturing and qualifying them and determining their sales-readiness—that's the middle of the funnel. These key metrics help you assess pipeline health at this stage.
Lead Generation Rate
Your lead generation rate shows how many new leads are produced over a specific period, typically monthly. For example, if your marketing efforts on one channel generate 400 leads over two months, you have a monthly lead gen rate of 200. The higher this number, the better it is—indicating better marketing.
Lead-to-MQL Conversion Rate
Once you have collected the leads, it's time to convert them into MQLs and take them further along the funnel. This metric looks at the percentage of new leads that turn into marketing qualified leads (MQLs)—these are deemed ready for sales follow-up. For instance, if you generate 400 leads monthly and 100 qualify as MQLs, your conversion rate is 25%.
Lead-to-MQL Conversion Rate: (Total MQLs / Total new leads) x 100
This helps you understand how effectively your lead nurturing process moves prospects down the funnel to sales-readiness. A higher conversion rate shows better lead scoring, nurturing, and qualification processes.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Your cost per lead represents the average spend required to acquire a new marketing lead. It's calculated by total marketing costs divided by the number of new leads.
For instance, $4,000 in marketing was spent to generate 400 leads. The CPL is $10.
Cost Per Lead: Total marketing costs / Total new leads
We want the cost to be as low as possible to acquire the same number of leads. So, in this case, lower CPL is better for your marketing campaigns. Once you've nurtured your leads, it's time to track and analyze the leads that move to the final stage of purchase—the bottom of the funnel.
Bottom-of-the-Funnel Metrics
As leads move to the final sales stages, these metrics indicate how effectively your processes close and retain business:
Opportunity-to-Win Ratio
This metric evaluates the percentage of sales opportunities that successfully convert to won deals. For example, if your team successfully closes 50 out of 100 closed opportunities, your opportunity-to-win ratio is 50%.
Opportunity-to-Win Ratio: (Total won opportunities / Total closed opportunities) x 100
The higher this percentage, the better your sales team performs. The average sales win rate hovers around 47%. If your sales team can close a higher percentage of leads, it means the sales team better understands your audience's needs. But along with that, it also signifies your lead filtering is done well.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Your CAC is the average cost to convert a new customer. It's calculated by dividing total sales and marketing costs by the number of new customers won.
For instance, $40,000 in marketing and sales to gain 100 new customers means a CAC of $400.
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Compare CAC to factors like customer lifetime value and retention rates to ensure your acquisition costs align with potential revenue and longevity from each customer gained. Use CAC benchmarks by industry to optimize your spend.
Sales Cycle Length
The sales cycle length tracks the average days from initial contact to deal close. In the B2B space, the average sales cycle length can be over two months. However, it's best to aim for a lower average here.
You can try account-based selling—a technique where you look at leads as accounts or companies to target instead of individual users.
This allows you to gain a holistic perspective of the pain points a particular account is trying to solve and target individual accounts with messaging that checks the right boxes.
Determining an individual lead's account can become easier using account intelligence tools like Factors.
Post-Conversion Metrics
Once a customer is acquired, you must also ensure they stay with your company. This involves customer success, customer support, and customer experience throughout their journey. Let's look at some metrics that help you determine the actual value of your products or services.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Your customer lifetime value metric represents the average revenue generated from a customer over the entire relationship. It's calculated using average purchase value, frequency, and customer lifespan.
For instance, if a customer pays you $200 a month, and the average relationship is 14 months, your customer lifetime value is $2800.
This metric is valuable for two reasons—one, it tells you the average revenue each customer generates, and two, it tells you how much money you can spend to acquire each customer. Continuing the above example, you're running profitable marketing campaigns if you spend $350 to acquire a new customer.
As you acquire more customers, keep an eye out for this number. Suppose you optimize this through better customer experience, improving features based on feedback, and providing more and more value every month. In that case, you can create a sustainable business in the long term.
Churn Rate
Your churn rate shows the percentage of customers you lose in a given timeframe. For example, if you lose 50 of your 500 customers annually, your churn rate is 10%.
The average annual churn rate in SaaS is 32-50%. This means 50-68% of the users continue using the same product for over a year. While the churn rate cannot be zero, the lower you keep this, the better it is for your business.
Higher churn signals a problem—the product or service isn't delivering enough value to the customers. It also hurts marketing since they now have to work with smaller budgets to acquire more customers while working with the high churn—and it's a vicious cycle you'd best keep at bay.
The best way is to track this metric closely and take action to reduce the churn rate whenever it is going in the wrong direction.
Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Customer satisfaction metrics like NPS measure customers' happiness and loyalty via direct feedback. NPS asks customers their likelihood to recommend your product or service on a 0-10 scale.
Net Promoter Score: % Promoters (9-10 score) - % Detractors (0-6 score)
This metric relates to the two metrics we discussed above. If your customers are happy, they will stay with the business longer, with less churn.
With technology aiding customer support, begin taking advantage of chatbots trained on your product documentation to answer customer questions instantly—and leave the complex queries for your lean support team.
Aligning the Chosen Metrics for Your Demand Generation Goals
While you can pick a few metrics from the above list and start tracking, you must ensure that the chosen metrics align with your demand generation goals. Let's look at what to consider to do this effectively.
Connect Metrics to Overall Goals
Consider your main company goals, like revenue growth, customer acquisition, or market expansion. Determine which critical metrics at each funnel stage help track progress toward those goals.
For example, track lead volume and velocity through the pipeline and retention rate for a revenue growth goal. To expand market reach, monitor website traffic sources and visitor engagement—this will tell you the story of how far and wide your marketing reaches.
The idea is to have a standardized set of primary metrics you and your marketing team will watch at each stage that map back to high-level goals. With this, you automatically align teams to work towards the same set of targets instead of creating an organizational drift.
Customize Metrics for Your Business
While standard metrics provide a strong starting point, you may want to customize based on your business model, goals, and audience.
Research benchmarks specific to your industry to set targets to gauge performance. Websites like Statista can help you understand the average range for your metrics. For instance, B2B businesses have higher CAC than DTC businesses. And that will help you set expectations when it comes to marketing costs. However, remember that the averages only help you set the goals initially. Once your marketing team has run campaigns over a few months, there will be enough data to create your own goals and metrics that work just right for your business.
Optimize Processes to Move Metrics
We must set metrics and remember them. Monitor how team hand-offs influence your metrics and identify friction points. Based on the data you gather, refine roles and information transitions across sales, marketing, product, and service to align activities that impact your numbers.
For instance, long lead follow-up times could slow velocity and conversion rates. However, refining the process to improve marketing-to-sales hand-offs can be a low-hanging fruit that maximizes lead nurturing effectiveness and increases sales readiness.
Don’t forget to take the time and understand how your teams work collaboratively and identify ways to accelerate progress on the metrics tied to company objectives—calibrate efforts across the funnel for maximum business impact.
Take the Steps To Achieve Your Business Goals with Data-Backed Marketing
Tracking every vanity metric gives us an illusion of understanding marketing performance. But drowning in numbers only muddies the picture. You want the numbers to tell a story about how marketing is progressing toward your business goals.
You want metrics to help you zero in on the KPIs and offer visibility into campaign health and opportunities—enabling strategic decisions to drive growth. And for that, you need to track the most important ones.
This guide will give you a headstart in creating tracking dashboards with the 12 most crucial demand generation metrics. But consider this as the beginning. Start pooling in data from multiple sources and aligning metrics with your business goals to extract the most valuable insights and tell the story right.
Try Factors when you need an analytics tool to help you achieve that quickly.
Factors helps you cut through the noise and clearly understand your marketing performance and revenue opportunities. It also takes advantage of visitor data to identify the business and industry a visitor is associated with—extremely valuable for account-based marketing campaigns.
Stop tracking your campaigns in the dark. The metrics are right here for you to make the most of them. Book a demo with Factors and see how we can make extracting insights easier.
FAQs
How is demand generation measured?
Demand generation is measured through a combination of website traffic, landing page conversion rate, lead volume, cost per lead, sales cycle length, win rate, churn rate, and customer lifetime value. Tracking these KPIs provides visibility into a campaign’s effectiveness at driving new prospects into the funnel and successfully converting them to customers.
What is lead scoring in demand generation?
Lead scoring helps prioritize, which leads to focus on nurturing and advancing down the funnel. It assigns points to leads based on attributes like demographics, behaviors like page views, or interactions like downloading content. The resulting lead score represents a lead's sales readiness. Analyzing metrics by lead score helps focus efforts on higher-scoring segments for better conversion.
How do you measure the ROI of demand generation?
To measure ROI, first calculate campaign costs like advertising spend, human resources, and content creation. Then, quantify revenue driven by new customers acquired through demand gen efforts. Subtract expenses from income to determine net profit, then divide by costs to calculate ROI as a percentage. Tracking attribution helps accurately assign revenue to suitable campaigns and channels.
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