Daily Archives: November 2, 2011

What is the ROI of Social Media?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

Scott Stratten of Unmarketing created a compelling case in his post:

THINGS WE SHOULD ASK THE ROI QUESTION ABOUT BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is about conversations. So why do you need ROI, when you don’t need ROI for other things, like?:

  1. Meetings - massive time wasters
  2. Company coffee cups - where’s the revenue?
  3. Telephone systems - when the phone rings, we answer it.
  4. Copiers and fax machines
  5. Commuting time and cost
If you don’t ask the ROI question about those things, why are you asking the question about a place to have conversations with prospective customers and partners?
Good point, Scott. Loved your webinar, by the way.
Jeff
P.S. Thanks to Kenny Madden for pointing out a similar post by David Meerman Scott at his great blog WebInkNow on ROI.

How big should our marketing budget be?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Lead Generation | Size of the Marketing Budget

I was recently asked this question by the VP of Marketing at a young software companyDollar Puzzle. “For a software company, what percentage of revenue should represent our marketing budget?“

Good question, but instead of a rough rule of thumb, Find New Customers suggests you do a few calculations to arrive at more specific outcomes.

  1. What is your revenue goal for the next 12 months?
  2. What percentage of that revenue has to come from new customers?
  3. What is your average deal size?
  4. What percentage of sales-qualified deals do you win?
  5. How many sales-qualified leads will you need to make the revenue goal?
  6. What percentage of marketing-qualified leads turn into sales-qualified leads?
  7. How many marketing-qualified leads do you need to make the revenue goal?
  8. How many raw opportunities do you need to generate to create the number of marketing-qualified leads needed?
  9. What is the marketing spend needed to generate a raw lead?
  10. Multiply the cost of each raw lead by the number of raw leads needed. That’s your marketing budget.
As you can see, instead of a rough guess at a marketing budget, you can actually calculate the budget needed to generate the new customer revenue needed.
What do you think? We love comments and those who share our content on social networks.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.