Demo Set Rates are the New ROI Influencer for Marketers

So far this year has been full of unexpected disruptions for companies across the globe, and marketers have seen carefully laid plans and expectations change drastically. And as business adjusts to a new state of normalcy, there's a new KPI that it seems marketers are going to be held more and more accountable for by company leadership: the demo set rate.

Historically, marketing tasks have included buying media, creating assets and ads, engaging on social media, etc. Essentially marketing is understood to be accountable for all activities that generate awareness and demand but don't usually get tracked to sales. Of course the marketing team was always responsible for generating the leads that became sales, but most companies didn't previously track marketing dollars out/sales revenue generated in a linear fashion.

But what we have seen this year is that the lines between sales and marketing are becoming increasingly blurred. The goal is growth, and both sales and marketing are working together like never before to help their companies meet lofty revenue goals. While demo set rates used to be squarely located in “sales territory,” they are now becoming the tell-tale influencer for executives to determine ROI and effectiveness of marketing programs.

So what does that mean for marketers? A few things:

1. Your leads need to be sales ready

When evaluating the effectiveness of your lead generation programs, you need to throw old habits out the door. Your job isn't done just because sales has a pipeline full of “top of funnel” leads to be nurtured. Sales cycles are continuing to shorten, which means that the leads that you generate for your team need to be sales ready. As daunting as it may seem, you need to start ensuring that every single lead you are passing over to your sales team is qualified and ready for a sales call. For our clients, this step alone has boosted demo set rates from a 2% average to a 10% average.

2. Your ads, landing pages, and white papers need to set the stage for an effective sales call

If the leads you generate are going to be primed to book demos, it is the role of the marketer to ensure that the sales team can create a meaningful connection based on the creative that was used to generate the lead. This will allow the SDR to easily connect with the lead and start the demo conversation on solid ground, and then move the lead into a demo quickly and efficiently. Your sales team needs to be aware of what you are running at any given time, and together you can collaborate on call scripts and user stories that allow the lead to be seamlessly engaged as it moves down the funnel.

3. You need to make media spend decisions based on the creative that is leading to demos and wins

This may mean extra time spent on attribution and data tracking, but for any marketer that is accountable for increasing the demo set rate, it will be worth it. Going forward, marketers will need to constantly track lead stages in the CRM. If a lead moves to a demo, a contract is sent, or a win takes place, you need to be able to accurately track it back to the ad level. And that ad is where you need to be moving your media dollars and using as inspiration for the next round of creative that your team executes.

It's an exciting time to be a marketer. You know your brand better than anyone else. In fact, you're probably the one that put a voice and life into your company's brand. And you obviously believe in the product or service you are offering. As you start infusing your demand generation strategy with insights from sales in order to increase demos and drive revenue beginning at the ad level, growth will follow. Once you are able to seamlessly prove ROI for your demand generation programs based on sales data and attribution, you're well on your way to becoming a marketing champion.

Ready to start increasing your demo set rates? Talk to a demand gen expert at Genly today

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