Setting a realistic SaaS demand generation objective helps set the stage.
Setting SaaS demand generation goals that are attainable for your organization and in line with KPIs for your business is critical. It's critical that your objectives address KPIs for your company and are realistic based on the advertising channels you're using, as well as the approach behind each.
Demand generation sales metrics
Setting attainable objectives such as the number of leads, pipeline, and income will provide you with a clear view of your goal. It's also critical that your objectives have the potential to be achieved based on a metric count standpoint, taking into account historical data and channel goals.
Lead goal
When setting your lead goal, consider your current Average Website Conversion Rate from all sources of traffic and siloed channels that are connected to your present plan. Setting the stage of possibility using historical data may help you determine what is possible for the future if no major changes have been made on your website.
Let's look at an example. You have a monthly advertising lead objective of 200 leads, a $25,000 paid media budget, and an Avg. Website Conversion Rate (booked demos) of 1%. Is it feasible to meet the goal of 200 leads each month? To perform this calculation, we'll need to make some reasonable assumptions. When we look at your historical Avg. CPC, we see that the Avg. CPC is $5.75. We know that we have $25,000 to spend, so we can anticipate about 4,347 clicks from our sponsored media campaign. If our Avg. Website Conversion Rate (1%) remains constant, we may expect around 43 website conversions
Reversing our calculation will help us back into a more logical lead goal. Let's multiple our lead goal by our Avg. CPC then divide by our Avg. Conversion Rate. This calculation will give you the media spend needed to achieve your lead goal.
(200 * $5.75) / 0.01 = $115,000
With our current Average Website Conversion Rate of 1% and Average CPC of $5.75, we can expect to capture 200 leads for $115,000 in paid media spend. Wow, that's a lot of money! It may be time to reevaluate our objective.
Conclusion
There are a few crucial things to consider.
- Last-click attribution is the only form of attribution considered by this theory, which does not give credit to touchpoints along the way.
- Because of the channel mix, how well you're filling your demand generation audiences, and other elements, your Avg. Website Conversion Rate may fluctuate over time.
- Consider alternate types of conversion with a higher conversion rate if you're only using Avg. Site Conversion Rates from booked demos.
- Marketing is not linear nor 100% binary - it's part art and part science.
Given these simple calculations, your SaaS demand generation plan may seem much more sinister than it actually is. Paid media alone cannot sustain a business's growth for very long. In this scenario, combining non-paid marketing tactics with your lead objective may be a good alternative. Consider the effect of what can be achieved by tracking leads to the pipeline and revenue when you can't offset your lead goal with non-paid efforts. You may discover that even with a limited budget, paid media is an excellent investment.
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