What is the number one thing that can kill the success of any funnel or campaign?

NOT Optimizing it over time.

OPTIMIZATION is so important. All of the energy, resources and ad spend that you put into
developing funnels to add to your pipeline is NOT WORTH anything if you don’t keep a close
eye on it.

Any campaign that you create cannot be a “set it and forget it” play. Even if a campaign starts
performing well right off the bat (and this is rare), there are still opportunities to make it even
better and add more to your bottom line.

We’ll dive into some of our top strategies and best practices when it comes to optimizing a lead
generation campaign.

General Expectations When You Start to
Optimize LinkedIn Ads

• Give your ads at least $500 in spend before making changes. LinkedIn takes some time to warm
  up and for the algorithm to learn.
• Spend Monitoring - Make sure your ad variations are spending. As LinkedIn starts to optimize,
  it will start to skew the spend to the ads that are getting the most favorable reactions.
• Keep an eye on stats like Click Through Rate, Cost Per Click, CPM, and Cost Per Conversion.
• Test Automatic Versus Manual Bidding.
• Look at Audience Demographic Data and who your ads are showing to.
• Follow a Strategic Optimization Timeline. (see cheat sheet below)

Know Your Numbers

The most important thing in any campaign and any optimization plan is to KNOW YOUR NUMBERS.

If you aren’t tracking each aspect and conversion rates through the entire funnel, then you will have
no idea where to start when making adjustments.

The worst thing you can do is let it be a crap shoot and just guess where things are breaking down.

But, we have a solution. You’ve seen it before. It’s our tracking dashboard that we use for any of
our internal campaigns and client campaigns.

It succinctly tracks each part of the campaign so that you can easily see where conversion is lacking.

Then - once you see where a breakdown is, THAT is where you focus your initial optimizations.

IT IS A WASTE OF TIME to make a whole new sales landing page if no one is even getting there!

Every company’s goal conversion percentages will vary based on the campaign, type of product,
sales life cycle, etc. So start with setting some baseline goal numbers that are realistic and go
from there.

The most important things to consider are how much you can spend on a lead, an MQL, an SQL
and a closed deal. We often base this on the Lifetime Value of a Client.

We'll Break It Down For You

If an average customer is worth $125,000 for you, then it’s ok to spend some money acquiring them. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is expecting to get closed deals at like 1-3% of their lifetime worth. While that would be amazing and if you have a funnel that is performing like that, SCALE it to no end!

But...reality is, that is extremely rare. So find the percentage that you are comfortable with.

Most companies average a client acquisition cost of 10-30% of their lifetime value of a client. So, if a client’s average lifetime value is $125,000, then you should be comfortable spending between $12,500 and $37,500 to acquire that client.

What goes into the Client Acquisition Cost can also vary per company, so finding your exact mix and calculations depends on your situation.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what could go into
your Client Acquisition Cost:

• Ad Spend - Cost per lead, cost per appointment, cost per SQL
(sales qualified lead), etc.
• Agency Fees (if applicable)
• Sales team commissions / costs
• Overhead of marketing/lead gen department (sometimes included, but often not included as this expense spans wider than acquisition lead gen)

Once you know your numbers, you can successfully judge the performance of any marketing or lead gen campaign and have realistic expectations of what the return on investment should be.

Then...once your numbers are in a good place across the dashboard, you can find additional optimizations to make and SCALE to grow your company and bottom line - the goal of every company.

Something’s Not Performing, Now What?

You have your lead generation funnel running and you have your tracking set up and have your goal numbers in place. But you aren’t quite satisfied with the conversion rates or are missing your goal numbers.

Here are a couple of tips for optimizing:

1 - Give It Time

This is the number one thing that clients get upset about when a new campaign starts. And we get it. And while we’d love to turn on a campaign and have it start producing sales right off the bat, the chances of that happening are low. Now, we’re not saying you have to invest thousands and thousands of dollars to get any results. But you do need to be realistic. This goes back to Lifetime Value of a Client and your sales cycle. If a new lead generation campaign has been running for 3 weeks but your average Sales Cycle is 6 months long - YOU CANNOT EXPECT TO HAVE A SALE IN THOSE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS. Sounds obvious right? The thing to keep an eye on in this stage is the QUALITY of the leads coming through. Do they mostly fit as a Marketing Qualified

Lead? Are they making their way deeper into your sales funnel and process? Has your team fol-
lowed up with them?

2 - Conversion Rates

With your tracking set up, you should have some baseline conversion rates that you are getting from each step in the funnel. If a segment isn’t performing to the baseline, that is where you focus.

Maybe your percentage of leads coming through are not matching as Marketing Qualified Leads. Well, then that is a Targeting problem and that is where you should focus. Maybe you’re getting plenty of traffic from the ads but they aren’t filling out the form on the landing page. Well, that’s a landing page problem and try a different format of the page or a new headline to entice them. The list goes on and on and the opportunities to optimize are endless - It can ALWAYS be better.

3 - Follow Up

We’ve talked about this before. It is ESSENTIAL that your sales team be reaching out to the new leads IN ADDITION to the automated follow up aspects of the funnel. People are so bombarded with different messages that you have to have MULTIPLE touchpoints before a prospect even thinks about taking action. We recommend your sales team reaching out to new prospects at least 6 times over the span of the first 2-3 weeks in addition to the automated pieces. You’re wasting your ad spend and lead gen efforts if you aren’t following up.

There are so many pieces that go into creating and maintaining a successful lead generation program
for your company.

We’ve created a LinkedIn Ads Optimization Guide that can help you troubleshoot where your
campaign performance is falling off, and what to do with the ads.