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How long should a lead generation campaign run?



How long should a lead generation campaign run?


A lead generation campaign combines a number of different marketing techniques into an integrated and effective promotional effort. The goal of any such initiative is to generate leads that can be converted into sales opportunities. This article will walk through how to plan and execute your own lead generation campaign. A lead generation campaign lasts as long or short as it takes to achieve its goals.

How long should a lead generation campaign last?

The length of a lead generation campaign depends on several factors. One consideration is whether you want to use this type of campaign to build awareness about your company, products, services, etc., or if you just need some quick results for specific purposes (such as promoting a new product). If you’re looking to establish brand recognition, then running a longer campaign may make sense. On the other hand, if you need immediate results, you might consider using more targeted tactics like SEO or PPC advertising instead. You could also choose to use both methods at once – something called “blended” advertising.

Another factor to keep in mind when determining the duration of a lead generation campaign is timing. It’s important to know when to start and end so as not to waste time with ineffective efforts that don’t produce meaningful results. For example, if you’d rather have customers find out about a certain offer than send emails, you probably shouldn’t wait until the middle of December before launching a holiday email campaign. Instead, you should do whatever it takes to get started right now.

How long should the campaign last?

Depending on how well you manage your budget, there are many ways to measure progress during a lead generation campaign. Your success will depend on which approach works best for your needs. Some of these options include:

 Email open rates

 Traffic source

 Conversion rate

 Sales conversion ratio

 ROI

You can easily track all four of these aspects by taking advantage of tracking tools available online. These analytics applications let you see exactly where traffic comes from, who clicks on your links, how they interact with your website content, and how much revenue each visitor generates. They help you understand how people navigate around your site and how well your ads perform, among other things. Tracking these numbers helps you fine tune future campaigns.

If you’re working within a limited budget, simply logging data will give you enough information to determine what worked and didn’t work over the course of your campaign. However, most businesses take pride in their ability to analyze large amounts of quantitative data. That means you can go beyond simple statistics to gain deeper insights into your business performance. By analyzing your data, you can identify trends and patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. Once you learn those lessons, you can apply them to future campaigns to improve conversion ratios even further.

How long should you run a digital campaign?

In addition to deciding how long the entire lead generation campaign will last, you must decide how long individual elements of your campaign will run. Most marketers tend to think about digital media first because they often involve websites and apps. But traditional offline activities like direct mailers, print advertisements, trade shows, TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, etc., still play a role in generating leads.

For instance, you may decide to advertise via social media channels but continue sending out printed flyers to potential clients. Or perhaps you create a video ad for YouTube but post a similar message on Facebook and Twitter too. Each channel has its pros and cons, and choosing which ones to invest resources in depends largely on your business objectives. To maximize the effectiveness of your overall campaign, you may wish to allocate equal time across multiple platforms.

Regardless of your strategy, remember that every element of your lead generation campaign contributes toward building relationships with prospective buyers. So make sure each tactic communicates effectively while being distinct enough to stand out against competitors. If you fail to meet expectations here, your prospects may lose interest quickly. And since you won’t be able to recover lost momentum, they may never return.

How long should a product launch campaign last?

As opposed to lead generation campaigns, product launches focus almost exclusively on driving revenue through sales conversions. Since product launches require less investment upfront compared to lead generation campaigns, companies typically conduct two types of promotions simultaneously: prelaunch and postlaunch. Prelaunch campaigns usually happen months ahead of the actual release date. Postlaunch campaigns occur immediately after the official announcement. Both kinds of promotions aim at increasing demand for the item in question.

During a prelaunch phase, you’ll likely promote the upcoming product in various forms, including press releases, articles in industry publications, interviews with influencers, social media posts, videos, blog posts, etc. Depending on the scope of your launch, you may also organize events designed to attract visitors and increase visibility. During the postlaunch period, you’ll try to convert as many interested parties as possible into paying customers.

To succeed at either stage, you’ll need to pay close attention to details. While you cannot control everything, you can ensure that your messaging reflects your target audience’s interests. Also, don’t forget to monitor your ROI throughout the whole cycle. As mentioned above, measuring your campaign’s outcomes lets you tweak your strategies accordingly. As soon as you recognize problems, you can address them quickly to avoid wasting money or missing deadlines.

Remember that a successful product launch requires a lot of preparation. Before starting any part of your campaign, you should already have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish. Make sure your team understands what the project entails and why it matters. Then communicate clearly with everyone involved – from stakeholders to vendors, contractors, and others – to prevent misunderstandings along the way. Finally, test everything thoroughly beforehand to minimize risk and errors.

Once again, the key lies in knowing when to stop. Every step of the way, you should evaluate your efforts based on measurable criteria, including engagement levels and conversion rates. When you reach a satisfactory level of activity, it’s time to move forward. Otherwise, you’ll only burn yourself out and leave little room for improvement.

Marketing automation software makes it easy to schedule tasks automatically, save time, and automate repetitive processes. With the right tool, you can set up automatic reminders whenever necessary. Plus, you can assign duties to dedicated employees who specialize in certain areas. Ultimately, automating your workflow enables you to spend more time focusing on higher-level strategic initiatives.

As you can see, lead generation campaigns vary greatly depending on your situation. There aren’t hard rules governing this aspect of marketing. Rather, you should adapt your plans according to the demands of your particular market. Of course, you’ll always benefit from conducting thorough research prior to making decisions. After all, that’s how you’ll come up with creative solutions that suit your unique circumstances.

Takeaway tips

When creating a lead generation campaign, it pays off to follow a few basic principles. First, you should define your objective(s) early on. Second, make sure your messages resonate with relevant audiences. Third, make sure your lead generation program doesn’t become outdated or irrelevant. Lastly, be prepared to adjust your campaign periodically to accommodate changes in consumer behavior and technology improvements.

What’s more, when designing a lead generation campaign, remember to ask questions like: How does my current marketing mix compare to competing offers? What’s the average conversion rate? Do I really need to change anything? Will changing my strategy hurt my bottom line? Is this the best option given our budget? Should we add another component? Are we ready to roll?

A lead generation campaign combines a number of different marketing tactics into an integrated, comprehensive effort designed to convert prospects into customers or at least build awareness about your business's offerings. When executed correctly, these efforts can be highly effective because they are all focused on the same end goal -- generating new revenue.

The most common types of lead generation campaigns include cold calls (aka telemarketing), email marketing, social media advertising, direct mail, website optimization, content creation, etc., but there are other approaches you might consider which we'll discuss below. The key is that each tactic has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. For instance, cold calling will work best with businesses who have already built up some brand recognition while email marketing can help you reach more people than any other channel. But if you're not sure how to go about setting up your first campaign, here's everything you need to know.

How long does it take to generate a lead?

There are two major factors affecting this question. One is the time required to set up a successful lead generation campaign. If you don't have a well established company name and/or you haven't spent much money promoting yourself before now, then you may find it takes longer to make progress as compared to those with higher profiles. However, even if you start from scratch, you still can generate leads quickly by following our step-by-step guide on how to create a lead generation plan.

Another factor impacting how long it takes to generate a lead is whether you choose to use a paid versus free method. The former requires upfront investment so you'll want to ensure you've done enough research to justify spending the cash. On the flip side, when using unpaid methods such as blogging, article writing, PPC ads, etc., you won't incur costs until someone clicks through. These can give you quicker results since they require no initial outlay.

If you're just getting started, however, both options offer significant benefits. Paid channels like pay per click advertisements allow you to target specific keywords without having to spend too much money upfront. Free channels let you test market various products and services without needing to commit any resources to promote them. So whichever option works best for you depends largely upon your budget and goals.

For example, if you're looking to generate sales right away, then you'd probably benefit more from investing in paid search rather than trying to attract traffic organically. You could also try to leverage existing contacts via LinkedIn groups and forums where the members tend to share their expertise. While these kinds of activities do cost money, they usually involve minimal effort and produce immediate returns once a prospect becomes interested.

On the other hand, if you're hoping to grow your business slowly over time, then you should focus on building credibility and establishing relationships with qualified individuals. This way potential clients will come to you naturally. It doesn't matter if you write articles, host webinars, hold live chats, send emails, or post on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ or LinkedIn -- you simply need to position yourself as an expert in your field. Then, whenever someone comes across your profile, he or she will often feel compelled to contact you directly. To learn more, check out how to become a thought leader online.

How many leads should I get a day?

This varies depending upon your objectives. Some companies only care about quality leads, whereas others value quantity above all else. Whatever your approach, it always helps to keep things simple by focusing on quality instead of volume. That means doing whatever you can to improve conversion rates from incoming leads.

To achieve this, you must develop clear criteria for evaluating each lead based on their relevance and likelihood to buy. In addition, you should regularly review the performance of each individual campaign and adjust accordingly. There's nothing worse than wasting money chasing after low-quality leads!

You should also measure your success against industry benchmarks. Are you producing enough leads relative to similar sized competitors? How many of them actually turn into paying customers? What percentage of your total leads did you lose due to poor follow-up? And perhaps most importantly, what kind of ROI are you seeing? Keep track of every detail along the way and refer back to these numbers periodically to determine if you made good decisions while running your campaign.

In order to get the most accurate information, you may want to enlist the assistance of a third party analytics service. They can analyze data collected during your campaign and provide valuable insights regarding your effectiveness. Plus, they typically charge very little for their services and sometimes offer trial periods to see if they're right for your needs.

How many leads does it take to get a sale?

One of the biggest mistakes many marketers make is thinking that if they can generate 100 leads per month, then they'll eventually sell 100 units. Unfortunately, this isn't true. Even though you may believe it's possible, it rarely happens unless certain conditions are met. First, you need to identify exactly what type of product you're selling. Next, you need to select the ideal audience. Finally, you need to establish a well defined sales funnel that converts prospects into buyers.

Once you've completed these steps, you'll realize why it's important to understand your buyer personas. Each customer represents a particular role within the buying cycle. By knowing what motivates them to purchase, you can tailor your messaging appropriately and optimize your lead generation strategy.

At the beginning of each campaign, you should ask yourself questions like "Who am I targeting?" and "What problems can I solve?". Once you answer these questions, you'll be able to better define your ideal customer persona. From there, you can decide if you want to focus primarily on B2C or B2B customers. Depending upon your niche, you may opt for ecommerce sites, blogs, telesales, trade shows, etc.

Of course, you can also segment your list according to demographics including age group, gender, income level, education, location, interests, hobbies, occupation, marital status, children under 18 years old, household size, region, etc. With this information, you'll be able to pinpoint which messages resonate best with whom.

As part of your overall lead generation strategy, you should also evaluate the competition. Who are your main rivals? Do they have better offers, bigger budgets, greater visibility, stronger brands, etc.? Based upon your findings, you can decide if working together would be mutually beneficial or if you should pursue separate strategies. Either way, you'll definitely stand out among your peers.

Finally, remember that you don't necessarily have to close deals immediately. Instead, you should aim for gradual growth. As soon as you receive a lead, you should carefully assess it to determine if it's worth pursuing further. Don't worry if you miss a few opportunities -- you can easily fix this problem later by reevaluating your entire campaign.

How many leads should a sales rep generate?

It really depends on your organization structure. If you operate solo, you can rely on yourself alone to handle the job. Otherwise, you should assign tasks to several team members so everyone can contribute throughout the year. Regardless, make sure you allocate sufficient resources so that you can complete all necessary duties.

That said, it's crucial to recognize that sales reps aren't responsible for bringing in new orders. Their primary responsibility lies elsewhere. For instance, they should nurture prospects and encourage them to move forward towards becoming buyers. At the same time, they shouldn't ignore the possibility of losing current accounts either. After all, it's likely that some of them were generated by another source.

Ultimately, a good sales rep knows what to say at precisely the right moment. He or she understands when to push harder and when to ease off. Furthermore, they possess strong communication skills and people skills that enable them to connect with anyone regardless of his or her background. All of this contributes greatly to the bottom line.

Conclusion

Whether you're starting fresh or expanding your operations, lead generation campaigns play a critical role in helping you meet your financial goals. Whether you're looking to increase revenues or reduce overhead expenses, taking the proper action today will ultimately save you thousands down the road.

A lead generation campaign combines a variety of marketing techniques in a cohesive and impactful promotion. It can be used to generate new business or as part of your overall marketing strategy. A well-planned campaign will have the right blend of methods that are tailored specifically to achieve its goals.

Here's how you plan out a successful lead generation campaign using our three step approach, which we've adapted from HubSpot Marketing. The first step involves defining your target market -- who it includes, why they're relevant, etc. Step two involves researching potential channels where you want to promote your offer (e.g., Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads). Then comes the last step, where you define your objectives for each channel. With these steps in mind, here's how to create a winning lead gen campaign.

What is an average lead generation?

To start off with some context, let's consider the following example. You own a small restaurant called Pizzeria Locale. Your goal is to sell more than $10 million worth of pizza this year, but you only make about $2 million in revenue. To meet your objective, you need to increase customer traffic by 30%. How do you go about doing that? Well, there could be many ways depending on your situation. For instance, if you were already selling pizza online, then increasing sales might involve promoting discounts or shipping deals. If not, then perhaps you'd look into other options like paid advertising or social media, both of which we'll talk about below.

If however you don't currently sell any products or services through online channels, then maybe you just focus on creating quality content and engaging followers via social media. This would allow you to build up a large enough list of people interested in what you have to say so that when you finally decide to launch a product, you won't have trouble getting customers. So now that we know how much money you're trying to earn, let's take a closer look at how much time you spend working on different aspects of your business.

The next section breaks down exactly how much time you should allocate towards various parts of your business to reach your targeted income goals.

Is an 8% conversion rate good?

With all due respect to pizzerias everywhere, I think the best way to answer this question is to give you an idea of what success looks like. Let's assume you want to increase your sales by 30%, which means you need 300 additional customers every month. That sounds like quite a lot doesn't it? But before you freak out, keep in mind that the math works out better if you divide it by 100 instead of multiplying it by 10. Now, let's see how much time you should spend on things outside of writing blog posts and posting Instagram pictures of your food.

First thing's first, you need to figure out how much money you actually make from the sale of each item. For simplicity, let's assume you're making $5 after tax on every single slice sold. Since you're aiming for 300 extra slices per month, that adds up to an additional $1,500 per month. Multiply that amount by 12 months and you get $18,000 monthly profit. Next, break that down further and calculate the percentage of each aspect responsible for generating those profits.

In this case, that amounts to 50% for the website and 25% for email marketing. This gives us a total of 75 percent of the pie spent on digital marketing. Given that you're going to spend most of your budget on building your mailing list, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that 70% of your spending goes toward marketing activities. And even though we didn't include it above, you also need to factor in some costs associated with running your business like rent or utilities. All together, your cost base should add up to around 80% of your revenues. From there, you can easily estimate how much time you have left over after accounting for everything else.

For instance, let's say you only work 40 hours per week. Assuming you're paying yourself minimum wage, that leaves you 20 hours to devote to growing your business. While that may sound like plenty, remember we said you needed to grow by 30%, meaning you need to double your sales. But since you started with a baseline of $18,000, doubling that requires an additional $36,000. That means you need to find another $3,600 per month. Divide that by 120 days and you arrive at roughly 7 minutes per day. Which isn't bad considering you probably spend more time looking at emails than reading them!

Now, let's say you want to improve your conversion rates by 1%. As mentioned earlier, that translates to adding 300 customers per month. So again, multiply that times 12 to determine how much you need to invest in improving conversions. We'll use the same method as above and assume that converting someone takes 15 seconds. At least once a day, you need to convert 10 people. That means you need to spend 0.75 seconds per person. Dividing that by 60 days yields 5.9 seconds per hour. Or roughly 6.8 seconds per minute. Not too shabby!

Finally, let's say your current conversion rate is 4%. That means you need to double your conversions for every dollar invested. Again, we'll use the same method as above and assume that converting someone takes 15 seconds. At least once a day, you need to convert 10 people. That means you need to spend 0.25 seconds per person. Dividing that by 24 hours yields 0.16 seconds per hour. Or roughly 0.17 seconds per minute. Still pretty good!

Is 2% a good conversion rate?

So far, the numbers seem fine, but how does that compare to other businesses? According to Hubspot, the median B2B company has a conversion rate between 2%-4%. Based on our calculations, that would mean you need to spend somewhere between 18 and 32 hours per month to hit your target. But wait...what about the "median" statistic? What if yours is higher or lower than the average?

Well, according to Hubspot, there are four main factors that can affect your conversion rate:  the number of visitors you send to your site, the quality of traffic that lands on your page, whether or not you deliver value to visitors and how quickly you close the deal. Those factors alone explain why your conversion rate might vary significantly based on your specific circumstances. However, you can still set reasonable expectations for your own business given the variables involved.

On top of that, your ideal audience size depends on the type of offers you choose to promote. For example, if you sell software to startups, having fewer prospects might be preferable because you can afford to lose less money if no one signs up. On the flip side, if you sell high end furniture, you might prefer a larger pool of buyers because you stand to gain more in terms of margins.

Lastly, while we talked about focusing primarily on direct-response tactics like cold calls and email marketing, you can always supplement with traditional forms of advertising such as print advertisements, radio spots, billboards, TV commercials, etc.

What is a good number of leads per day?

While there aren't really any hard and fast rules regarding how many leads you should aim for per day, there are some general guidelines you can follow. First of all, you must have an effective lead capture form on your landing pages so that leads fill it out and provide their contact information. Second, you shouldn't aim for more than 150 leads per day unless you're willing to pay for more resources to handle the influx. Third, you should try to avoid sending multiple messages to the same prospect within 24 hours of receiving their inquiry. Finally, you should also prioritize reaching out to people who have visited your website previously rather than cold call prospects who haven't been there yet.

There's no magic formula for determining how long a lead generation campaign should run. Instead, you need to rely on common sense and experience. Think about what makes sense for your business, your industry, your competitors and your financial status. After you've done that, feel free to adjust accordingly. Just realize that your efforts will likely peak during certain periods throughout the year. For instance, summertime tends to bring more inquiries than winter. Also, holidays tend to attract lots of attention. And then there's Valentine's Day.


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Anyleads

San Francisco

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