Tracking Marketing Costs

The Cost of your Marketing Campaigns Should be Tracked

Sales leads cost money. The costs can be the time cold calling or prospecting time, tradeshow costs, lead purchases, landing page design, Google Adwords cost, direct mail expense, and the purchase price of a lead list. The lead cost should be applied to the campaign and then tracked. The tracking will tell you what your cost per lead is. Tracking tools can be simple online sales tools to more robust CRM or customer relationship management solutions.

Track Marketing Campaign Lead Source by Tagging the Lead

A simple way to track marketing costs is to tag lead source onto a lead. This lead source puts the lead in the campaign cost category. The lead is tracked now through qualification or de-qualification or sales win or sales loss. Now, with the cost of the marketing campaign known, marketing costs and marketing efficiency are recorded.

Robust Marketing Campaign Management

A deeper marketing tracking method is to track the campaign name, including data like type, target audience, sponsor, budget cost, actual cost, expected response, expected ROI, actual response count, and then the actual ROI. This is a good tool for a marketing person to drive marketing efficiency. More detail is captured and the marketing campaign is held more accountable. The projections of the campaign can be reported against actuals. This lays the groundwork and sets the groundrules for future marketing spend.