Lead Generation Review: How to Prepare for 2025

When it comes to lead generation strategies, your business is likely utilizing multiple methods to not only attract more leads but qualify them for your sales team. However, as with any marketing plan, lead generation is not a one-time investment. Instead, it’s an ongoing process that requires comprehensive analysis and adaptation.

So, as we enter a new year in 2025, it’s time for a review of the previous year’s initiatives. We should ask ourselves: did our B2B lead generation strategies work as well as expected, and how can they be improved?

Unfortunately, asking this question is much easier than answering it. If you don’t have the right systems and tools, you’ll end up treading water and getting more subpar leads. With that in mind, let’s break down how to evaluate your lead generation tactics and what to do to improve them.

The Main KPIs of Lead Gen

To understand whether your lead generation strategy works well, you must know which metrics matter the most. Some of the most valuable key performance indicators (KPIs) of lead generation include:

• Cost Per Lead – How much does it cost to generate a lead? To determine this, divide the number of leads by the amount you spend on a specific campaign. For example, if you spend $1,000 to generate 1,000 leads, the cost per lead is $1.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) – One of the advantages of B2B sales is that clients are often long-term. While B2C customers may only pay for a product or service once, B2B customers likely generate monthly or ongoing revenue. CLTV is the amount of realistic lifetime value you get from a single customer. This figure is crucial because it helps you determine your overall lead gen return on investment (ROI).
• Lead Conversion Rate – SEO for lead generation can bring a lot of traffic to your website, but how many of those leads convert into paying customers? In addition to the conversion rate, you should also look at factors like bounce rates and traffic origination (where leads came from when visiting your site). These metrics can help you refine your approach so you can qualify leads before they hit a landing page, thus boosting your conversion rate.
• Customer Engagement – This metric is a bit broad and complex, but it can help you understand the value of your lead generation strategies. When tracking engagement, you can look at elements like the number of touchpoints with a particular lead, time spent on your landing pages, and social engagement (comments, likes, shares). Overall, if you’re trying to build a brand, you want as much engagement as possible. If you’re more focused on sales, the goal is to move leads through the pipeline quickly. Both options are valuable and can work in tandem, but you should do one or the other when launching a specific campaign.
  

Analyzing Lead Quality

Because B2B sales require more touchpoints and interactions to convert leads to customers, you need to qualify your leads as much as possible before moving them into your sales pipeline. Also, you must adapt your strategy to appeal to multiple decision-makers along the buyer’s journey. Just because you’re ready to convert your initial lead doesn’t mean you’ll close the deal. If someone higher up in the client company vetoes the deal, you’re out of luck.

So, one way to ensure you’re maximizing your ROI and streamlining your marketing and sales campaigns is to implement a lead-scoring strategy. Lead scoring is when you assign points based on the actions of a particular lead. Certain actions should be “weighted” (given a higher score) because they’re more likely to convert. For example, clicking an ad on a SERP may count as one point, while scheduling a product demo is worth 10 points.

The primary purpose of lead scoring is to know exactly when your sales team should reach out to move the lead to the next phase of the pipeline. High-scoring leads should be the priority while low-scoring leads can be left on the back burner (but not ignored completely).

Another way to assess lead quality is through attribution modeling. Attribution modeling is when you rank each touchpoint from initial contact to conversion. There’s no “right” way to do this, as each company is unique. Some brands may focus on the last touchpoint that leads to a conversion, while others may focus on awareness campaigns to initiate contact with new leads. Use historical data to see which touchpoints move the needle the most. You can also get feedback from customers and sales reps to see where most conversions happen.

The benefit of attribution modeling is that it shows you where to put most of your time and energy. Lead scoring tells you which leads are worth pursuing, but attribution modeling tells you which marketing and sales efforts are getting the most traction. For example, based on historical data, you may discover that anyone who schedules a demo is 90 percent likely to convert. So, the goal should be to move people through the pipeline so they reach that touchpoint as soon as possible.

Actionable Tips for Lead Generation

Overall, you should be leveraging multiple platforms and campaigns to generate new leads. For example, SEO for lead generation can help capture organic site traffic based on longtail keywords. Paid ads can help boost your numbers, but you must ensure you have high-quality content that can convert and move leads to the next stage of the pipeline.

That said, lead generation is a complicated process that requires diligence and persistence. So, why not let the SEO experts at CSP handle the details for you? We can help you generate high-quality leads and move them through your pipeline so you can focus on closing deals and strengthening your bottom line. Contact us today to get started.