11 demand generation metrics that measure success

You’re tasked with setting up a demand generation campaign. But how do you measure its success? There are many ways you could go about it so, to give you a hand, we’ve pulled together 11 of the most effective demand generation metrics. These will help you run a winning campaign – and report back to management with confidence.

Setting up for demand gen success

Unlike lead generation, demand generation is less sales-y. It’s about creating useful and educational content that positions your business as the expert and that becomes a trusted source of information your customers need. Lead generation metrics are in many ways easier to pin down, as demand gen, by nature, has nuances.

So what’s important when measuring demand generation? Content plays a key part, so you need to consider a couple of things.

Keep your funnel topped up

Curate plenty of content for each stage of your demand generation funnel. Your customer journey should feel organic, where the customer can self-serve through your content to educate themselves.

Have clear content KPIs

Know what the right KPIs are for each type of content you publish. They’ll feed into your wider demand gen metrics and help you understand what content works – or what might need changing.

Make content for your ICP

Your ideal customer profile represents those perfect-fit prospects. Do your research and consult the data to get a solid understanding of the audience you’re going after. And when you’ve got this clear, it’s time to create compelling content to catch the attention of high-intent, highly aligned audiences. Want to learn more about using demand generation to attract high-quality leads? Check out this Doc:

Click to read Modern Demand Marketing for your company | Turtl Guide

Sales metrics

1. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

They’re clicking. They’re filling out forms. They’re engaging. This means they’re an MQL that wants to talk to your sales team – and hopefully buy. It’s simple; the more MQLs you identify, the more your demand generation efforts are working. You’ve reached the right audience, you’ve got the right content, and now it’s over to sales to round it all off.

2. Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

Your sales team has vetted MQLs – and now they’re ready to buy. You’ll find them lurking on your pricing pages, taking advantage of free trials, or contacting sales directly. Tracking SQLs helps you understand the number of MQLs that convert to SQLs and find any holes in your funnel where they could be dropping off.

3. Days in status

This is the number of days a lead stays on a particular status before moving on. This could be a section of your funnel or moving from MQL to SQL. It’s a fine balance to work out – you don’t want potential customers stuck in the same place without further engagement, but you also don’t want to rush them through a buying decision before they’re ready. Tracking days in status will help you understand what your customer cycle looks like… and if you occasionally need to poke your sales team into action.

4. Customer lifetime value (CLTV)

Your best customers = a high CLTV. They haven’t just bought, upped, and left. The customers with high CLTV stick around and become repeat buyers. You can cross-sell to them and ultimately show that you bagged a good customer. Use CLTV to check demand gen is working – if your CLTV is increasing with each purchasing customer, you’re doing it right.

Cost metrics

5. Cost per lead (CPL)

You need to know your demand gen efforts aren’t in vain. And you need to know you’re spending your budget in the right places. Cost per lead does what it says on the tin – it tells you how much it costs you to get a lead by dividing your marketing spend by the number of leads you generate.

6. Cost per acquisition (CPA)

It’s like CPL, but instead CPA tells you how much it costs to acquire a fully-fledged customer. You can compare CPLs and CPAs to work out if there’s a drop-off point in your funnel, or if your leads are converting as you expect.

7. Contribution to total revenue

A bigger-picture metric that’ll help you see how your demand generation campaign is benefitting the wider marketing and sales strategy. You’ll understand whether you’ve spent your budget wisely, or if you could maximize it elsewhere. And you’ll get a good grasp of the ROI from your demand generation strategy and how it compares to your other campaigns.

8. Average deal size

A.K.A. how much your customers buy from you throughout your sales cycle. Linked closely to CLTV, it helps you understand the value of each customer and what they could be worth to your business in the future. If you can attribute the customer to a particular channel too, even better. You’ll see what’s been most effective in converting them and you can review your budget spend across your touchpoints. With this info, you can decide whether to optimize for future customers in your sales cycle.

9. Payback period

It’s all very well shelling out on SEO, PPC, content, and ads as part of your demand generation tactics. But how long does it take to recoup that money? That’s where the payback period metric comes in. It measures how long it takes to win back your upfront purchase costs from new customers. The shorter the payback period, the better. 12 months or less is an ideal timescale.

Performance metrics

10. Content engagement

Downloads, clicks, views, comments, opens, time spent on page…you know the drill. Content strengthens your industry authority, helps customers to self-educate, and guides them through to conversion. So you need to keep tabs on its performance.

11. Conversion rate by channel

Once you know what KPIs work for each channel, you should track the conversion rates for them. This could be activations, signups – basically any action that converts leads after they engage with your content. Track the channels that are working for you and optimize as you go for next-level campaign results.

Now you’re clued up on the success metrics for your demand generation goals, you need to know how to report on them. This is where you tell the story about the impact of your campaign, learn what tactics worked, and showcase your hard work to C-suite and management.

1. Set benchmarks and goals

Set these before you start. Use previous campaign data, channel intel, similar content you’ve created before – or try Turtl Benchmarks to compare content performance across internal teams, industry, and even globally. Then you’ve got something to work towards and you can evaluate how successful your campaign’s been at the end. These could be financial, sentiment, or engagement-driven measurements.

2. Set a schedule for reporting

Decide how often you’ll report on your campaign or elements of it. Not everything will explode with activity at once, so think about what’s a sensible gap to leave between reports to notice changes or progress – and to make sure you’ll have something to talk about.

3. Segment data

Learn more about your potential customers with segmented data. Demographics and behaviors work hand-in-hand with segmenting your channel data to see what content works where, what messaging clicks, and how you can tailor future campaigns or content to different audiences.

4. Highlight key channels or content

What channels saw the best engagement? And what content had all eyes on it and helped with conversions? Take a deep dive into each element to help you understand what content formats work, what information resonates with customers, or what messaging helps drive them to the next stage of the funnel. Or perhaps a channel didn’t quite work how you were expecting? Make sure you include details of how you worked to optimize and iterate in your report narrative.

5. Add context

Don’t just throw numbers around. Explain their context. Compare data and analytics to previous campaigns or iterations. Explain any external factors that may have influenced your audience’s behaviors or changes to your game plan that led to different outcomes.

6. Use charts and graphs

There are much better ways to present your data than a wordy, percentage-ridden document that would serve just as well as a virtual doorstop. Visuals like charts and graphs break up your reports – and interactive charts like Turtl’s boost engagement even more. Data visualization is  more concise and adds a touch of the aesthetic to an otherwise potentially dry report.

7. Highlight key insights

What went spectacularly? What bombed? How did you make changes to improve? What surprised you along the way? What patterns emerged? You can answer all these questions if your KPIs and data work together. Use this insight to understand how you can improve or iterate for next time.

8. Report on financials

Financial benchmarks are key to understanding the success of your demand gen campaign. Prepare these for your reporting and you’ll have answered probably 80% of your management’s questions upfront.

9. Run comparisons

How does this campaign compare to previous demand generation campaigns? Or any other relevant historical data? How did channels and content fare against each other? Make sure you talk about how you made changes when you found aspects underperforming.

10. Give recommendations

Think ahead to future campaigns and what you’d recommend, stay the same, change, or completely abandon.