a single source, nothing corroborates it

Judge the campaign on cost per qualified lead

Divide the spend by the number of leads a human has actually marked qualified, and compare that against your other channels; impressions, clicks and cost per click tell you nothing. One specialist has watched tens of thousands of dollars a month buy zero quality leads, one budget going to people searching for a snake and another collecting signups from people hunting free apps. Expect the funnel to lose most of the traffic and still pay: five hundred dollars buying a hundred clicks, thirty form fills and ten qualified leads is fifty dollars each, which is cheap by business software standards. Log the volume and the cost weekly so you can see whether each change moved it.

The method

1. 01

   Derive cost per qualified lead by dividing campaign spend by the count of CRM leads a human has marked qualified, and use it as the baseline to compare against your other channels.

2. 02

   Disregard the impressions, clicks and cost-per-click the ad platform reports; judge the campaign only on how many qualified leads it produced and what each one cost.

3. 03

   Expect the funnel to lose most of the traffic and still pay off: a few hundred dollars of clicks converting a third of visitors into form fills and a third of those into qualified leads is cheap by B2B standards.

4. 04

   Log qualified-lead volume and cost per qualified lead weekly or monthly, so you can tell whether each change to the ad, targeting or page actually moved the cost down.

What it returned

• $500

  His worked example: $500 buys 100 clicks, 30 people complete the form, 10 are marked qualified, giving $50 per qualified lead.

• He has seen tens of thousands of dollars a month buy zero quality leads: one client's AdWords budget went to people searching for python the snake, another collected trial signups from people looking for free apps.

Sources

• How to Use LinkedIn Sponsored Content to Get Sales LeadsGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Results Tracking · 2016-06-10