Dynamics conference season is winding down. That means it’s time to calculate what you got for the big bucks you invested in your sponsorships. In other words, it’s time for marketers to answer these questions:
- What’s my cost-per-lead (CPL) for each event?
- How does that CPL compare to the CPL I’m achieving through non-conference activities?
- Should I re-evaluate my conference spend and look for alternative lead gen sources?
Some of you might bypass these questions, and tell yourself that you got “lots of exposure” and “great branding,” and that’s good enough to justify further conference spending. But, what’s the point of even getting good exposure and great branding if it doesn’t lead to any tangible results?
Finding out your CPL will give you tons of insight into whether or not your conference investments are paying off, and could result in the opportunity for you to invest in new activities that actually will.
If you’d like to know your CPL, here’s a formula to help you calculate it. This equation might seem obvious to some, but if you’re a marketer that doesn’t track your CPL, this is an easy way to start.
Step #1: Calculate your Total Amount Invested (TAI), using this formula…
Conference Sponsorship Fee + Flights + Hotels + Meals + Entertainment + Opportunity Cost = TAI
Finding out the Opportunity Cost requires additional calculations, but it’s important to know, since “opportunity” relates to “time” and time equals money. The best way to do this is to use the formula below for each employee that traveled to the event, then add them all together.
Annual Salary / 52 (weeks) / 7 (days) / 8 (hours) = Hourly wage
Hourly wage + # of hours spent at conference = Opportunity cost
Ok, now that you’ve figured out the total Opportunity Cost and the TAI, you can move on.
Step #2: Find out the total number of leads you generated. This number should exclude everyone who stopped by your booth for a fidget spinner or other piece of swag, and just focus on people who expressed actual interest in your product. You may have scanned the badges of 400 people, but once you dig deeper to find the actual leads, that number will severely decrease.
Step #3: Figure out your total cost per lead (CPL)
Divide the # of Actual Leads into your TAI = CPL.
Step #4: Draw conclusions from your CPL by asking yourself these questions…
- How does this CPL compare to my investment in the same trade show last year?
- How does this CPL compare to my investments in other marketing activities?
- Would I be better off sending people to just go to the trade show as attendees to network and meet prospects instead of sponsoring?
- If we are going to continue sponsoring this show, what other online marketing activities can we undertake to give more oomph to the trade show?
Once you are quantifying more of your marketing productivity, you’ll be more likely to adopt our golden rule of marketing: If you can’t measure it, you shouldn’t be doing it.
