Did you know that 61% of marketers say their biggest challenge is generating traffic and leads, and proving the ROI of those leads? As budget season approaches, proving the value of your marketing initiatives is more crucial than ever. In this post, I’ll share tips that will help you demonstrate how your marketing campaigns are directly contributing to revenue, setting you up for a bigger 2025 budget!
First off, let's tackle the big question—why does proving ROI matter so much? Well, it’s simple: when your marketing efforts are clearly tied to revenue, it’s much easier to justify your budget. And when you can prove the value of what you're doing, it opens the door to more funding, better resources, and a greater impact on your business goals.
One of my favorite tips is working with your sales team to determine your average deal size. This is important because once you know your average deal size, you can start to assign dollar values to your leads. For example, if your average deal size is $10,000, and your marketing campaign generates 10 marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), you’re potentially sending $100,000 worth of opportunities to sales.
Knowing these numbers allows you to say, “Hey, we passed $100,000 worth of deals to sales this quarter.” That’s a much stronger statement than simply saying you passed 10 leads.
HubSpot makes it super easy to track the metrics that matter. You can create reports and dashboards that automatically show how many leads your marketing campaigns are generating, where they’re coming from, and what happens once they move to sales. Setting up lifecycle stages in HubSpot is crucial because it helps both marketing and sales teams understand when a lead is ready to be passed over and when sales should take over.
If you haven’t defined your lifecycle stages yet, this is the time to do it! Make sure you have a solid handoff process in place so that leads are tracked correctly as they move from marketing to sales. This makes it easier to prove ROI later on.
Lead scoring is an excellent feature in HubSpot that enables you to concentrate on attracting quality leads rather than just a large number. By establishing a system that allocates points to leads according to their behaviors (such as completing high-intent forms or visiting important pages), you can deliver more qualified, valuable leads to the sales team.
Lead scoring allows you to demonstrate that you're not merely generating random leads—you're targeting the right individuals who are more likely to become paying customers. This emphasis on quality over quantity appeals to the C-suite and can result in larger budgets and increased investment in your marketing initiatives.
HubSpot’s dashboards are a great way to provide a clear view of how your marketing is performing. Set up custom dashboards for your different teams—marketing, sales, and even executives—so they can see the metrics that matter most to them. For instance, your C-suite team might want to focus on overall revenue generated by marketing, while your sales team will appreciate seeing which leads are closer to converting.
Dashboards give you the power to auto-send reports to your stakeholders, which means less manual work for you and more visibility for them.
At the end of the day, the C-suite cares about one thing: revenue. Your job as a marketer is to show them how your efforts directly contribute to the bottom line. Start by presenting metrics like:
The clearer you are about how marketing impacts revenue, the easier it will be to make the case for an increased budget in 2025. And don’t be afraid to show potential! Highlight how improving certain areas—like increasing lead quality or optimizing campaigns—can bring in even more revenue next year.
Proving marketing ROI is essential if you want to secure (or even increase) your marketing budget. By knowing your average deal size, using HubSpot to track and report your efforts, and focusing on quality leads through lead scoring, you’ll be in a strong position to prove your value.
And remember, it’s all about the bottom line! Keep communicating with sales and leadership, and you’ll not only prove your marketing efforts are worth funding, but you’ll also set the stage for an even bigger impact in 2025.
By following these tips, you’re setting your team up for success, and before you know it, your 2025 marketing budget will be bigger and better!