By Brianne Miller, LCI
Who doesn’t like a good old PB&J? It’s an analogy, of course, but I’m writing this while anticipating lunch, and hunger is more powerful than the keyboard ?.
Here at LCI, we work with clients who need to directly tie their marketing spend to lead generation/sales. There are approximately 1,375,906 ways to measure how leads translate to sales, but only a few data points to concern yourself with when tying PR tactics to leads.
Here’s a quick rundown:
Direct data from sales conversion software.
We recently helped client iTradeNetwork set up a series of informational webinars on their products in partnership with an important trade publication. The sales team directly inputted the leads generated from that event into the sales database and flagged them with a code for the webinar. While sales can take time, we’re able to track conversions regularly. This is quantifiable ROI for the webinar tactic and informs us if it’s an activity worth pursuing.
“How did you hear about us?”
This is a classic customer service line, but it also serves a specific purpose. Quantifying how a customer heard about a company/product/service at the salesperson level can inform marketing where their marketing spend is most efficient. It’s simple, but it works as long as tracking is consistent. For example, former LCI client Native Trails introduced a new high-end line of eco-chic bathtubs. Native Trails sold them mostly through trade showrooms. Property Brothers TV show on HGTV featured the tub editorially – and showrooms received counter cards featuring the placement. Salespersons kept track of how many people said, “I saw it on HGTV,” and bubbled that data up to Native Trails.
Clicks.
Editorial placements online yield click-thru’s to landing pages/client websites. Google Analytics data can show where the clicks came from and allow you to assign a value to that placement. While this may seem simple, the results can be counter-intuitive and revealing. A client (who shall remain nameless) convinced themselves that a New York Times placement would make his phone ring off the hook. We worked tirelessly to make it happen – and then it did! Results? Meh, at best. But a placement on a fairly low-trafficked blog almost crashed their website with referred traffic. Test and learn! PR is as much an art as a science.
Back to the peanut butter & jelly… is a peanut butter sandwich good? Yeah. Is a jelly sandwich good? Sure. Is a peanut butter & jelly sandwich amazing? Absolutely. Use PR to help generate leads and have an amazing sandwich.
Related articles:
10 top PR lead generation ideas from successful entrepreneurs – Agility PR
How To Use PR For B2B Lead Generation – Forbes
How can PR help with lead generation? – LinkedIn