The Holy Grail of Lead Generation

How to confidently allocate your marketing budget with attribution.

Unlocking scalable lead generation

Marketing is a unique blend of creativity and strategy, but its ultimate test lies in delivering measurable business outcomes.

As a marketing leader, your success hinges on your ability to confidently stand before stakeholders – be it executives, boards or investors – and prove how your efforts are driving business growth.

But here’s the challenge: knowing where to allocate your budget to maximise impact isn’t always straightforward. Attribution models often fall short, failing to capture the full picture of what’s driving real growth. And in the current business climate, when budgets are tight and results are critical, making informed decisions about where to invest is more important than ever.

The key lies in understanding incrementality – the ability to identify which marketing activities are truly driving net-new leads and sales for your business. When you know which channels are adding incremental value, you hold the keys to scaling lead generation and confidently guiding your team toward measurable growth.

This article will walk you through a practical, step-by-step approach to mastering marketing measurement. From adopting an investor mindset to experimenting with causality, you’ll learn how to cut through the noise, focus on what matters and achieve the holy grail of scalable growth for your organisation.

Step 1: Think like an investor

To confidently allocate your marketing budget, you need to shift your perspective. 

Think like an investor first, and a marketer second. 

This mindset helps you evaluate your efforts through the lens of business growth and ROI, aligning your strategy with what matters most to stakeholders – incrementality.

What does it mean to think like an investor?

Investors are not concerned with the creative elements of your campaigns or the intricacies of attribution models. Their primary question is: What are you doing to grow the business? 

Incrementality is about whether your efforts are bringing in net-new leads and sales – not just fighting over credit for existing demand.

If a prospect would have purchased from your company regardless of marketing efforts, those activities aren’t incremental. 

On the other hand, if your campaigns are the reason a lead converts, that’s the type of impact that adds value to the business – and that’s what stakeholders care about.

Aligning marketing with business goals

Thinking like an investor starts with understanding your company’s broader strategy. What are the goals of the business? Where is leadership focusing their efforts? If your marketing activities don’t align with these priorities, you’re working in a silo – and that’s a recipe for misalignment.

By adopting this investor-first mentality, you can reframe your measurement approach to focus on outcomes that truly matter to the business. This not only improves your decision-making but also strengthens your credibility with executives.

Step 2: Model your business

To allocate your marketing budget effectively, you need a clear understanding of your business model and the key variables marketing can influence. This means creating a simple framework that connects your marketing activities to the outcomes your business needs to grow.

Identify leading indicators

While revenue is the ultimate goal, it’s often influenced by factors outside marketing’s control, like sales execution or product performance. Instead, focus on leading indicators – metrics that signal buyer intent and can be directly impacted by your marketing efforts. 

Examples include:

• Demo requests or pricing enquiries: Clear signals of interest.
• Newsletter signups or content downloads: Indicators of engagement with your brand.

These leading indicators should be the foundation of your marketing measurement. They act as a proxy for future revenue, allowing you to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns in real-time without waiting months for deals to close.

Map the customer journey

Every business has a unique customer journey, and it’s critical to align your metrics with each stage of that journey. Collaborate with stakeholders to define what the journey looks like for your customers. Be honest about where marketing has the most influence and where other factors, like pricing or sales experience, play a larger role.

For example:

• Awareness stage: Focus on impressions, reach and organic traffic.
• Consideration stage: Track demo requests, email subscriptions or webinar registrations.
• Decision stage: Monitor metrics tied to sales, like deal acceleration or close rates.

By focusing on what marketing can truly influence, you can eliminate wasted effort on areas where your impact is minimal.

Forecast benchmarks

Once you’ve identified your leading indicators, analyse your historical data. What did the last 12 months look like for demo requests, content downloads or other key metrics? Use these trends to set realistic benchmarks for the next quarter or year.

For example:

• If demo requests increased by 10% quarter-on-quarter last year, how can you replicate or exceed that growth with your marketing efforts this year?
• If a specific channel consistently drives results, how can you scale it further while testing new opportunities?

This forecast will act as your roadmap, helping you allocate your budget towards channels and campaigns that have the highest potential for impact.

Align the team

Ensure all stakeholders agree on the metrics that matter and their connection to the customer journey. Alignment reduces friction between marketing, sales and leadership, allowing everyone to work toward shared goals.

With a clear model in place, you’re ready to start measuring the effectiveness of your efforts and making data-driven decisions.

Step 3: Measure what matters

In marketing, there’s no shortage of metrics to track. 

The challenge lies in identifying the ones that truly matter – metrics that tie directly to your business goals and help you make confident decisions about budget allocation.

Use actionable metrics

Start by honing in on metrics that provide real-time feedback on your campaigns. These leading indicators should reflect buyer intent and align with your customer journey. 

Examples include:

• Website traffic: A fundamental measure of how well you’re driving awareness.
• Demo requests: A clear signal of potential conversion.
• Email signups: A strong indicator of interest and engagement.
• Content downloads: Proof that your audience finds value in your offerings.

These metrics are actionable and allow you to quickly assess whether your efforts are working.

Track across channels

Marketing is no longer confined to a single channel. To measure what matters, you need to monitor performance across paid, owned and earned channels, including:

• Paid channels: Ad impressions, click-through rates and cost-per-lead (CPL).
• Owned channels: Organic traffic, social media engagement and email open rates.
• Earned channels: PR mentions, backlinks and third-party reviews.

By tracking these metrics consistently over time (e.g., 6–12 months), you’ll start to see which channels are driving the most meaningful results.

Move beyond vanity metrics

It’s tempting to chase metrics like impressions, clicks or likes, but these don’t always correlate with business growth. Instead, focus on metrics that demonstrate real impact:

• Are your campaigns generating net-new leads or sales?
• Are your marketing efforts driving incremental growth beyond baseline performance?

Avoid getting caught up in vanity metrics that look impressive but don’t contribute to measurable outcomes.

Use a simple system

If your marketing budget is under £1-2 million, you don’t need fancy tools to measure your impact. A well-organised spreadsheet can do the trick:

• Track website traffic, demo requests, social engagement and ad impressions.
• Monitor daily or weekly trends to understand how your campaigns are performing.
• Look for correlations between marketing activities and key outcomes.

As your efforts scale and become more complex, consider upgrading to tools like marketing automation platforms or analytics software to manage multiple channels.

Build a feedback loop

Measurement isn’t a one-time task – it’s an ongoing process. Regularly review your data and refine your approach:

• Are there channels that consistently outperform others?
• Are your leading indicators translating into actual revenue over time?
• Are there underperforming channels that could benefit from reallocation?

This feedback loop will keep your strategy agile and ensure you’re always investing in what works.

Step 4: Uncover correlations

Once you’ve identified the key metrics to track, the next step is to understand the relationship between your marketing activities and the outcomes they drive. 

By uncovering correlations, you can determine which channels and campaigns have the most impact and where your budget is best spent.

Connect inputs to outputs

To uncover correlations, you need to map your input metrics (reach, impressions, clicks) to your output metrics (demo requests, sales, signups). For example:

• Does a spike in LinkedIn impressions correlate with an increase in demo requests?
• When website traffic rises, does email list growth follow?

By analysing these patterns, you can identify which channels or campaigns consistently contribute to your desired outcomes.

Analyse historical data

Look back at the past 12-24 months of marketing performance. Track the performance of each channel – paid, owned and earned – and compare it to your key output metrics. This long-term view helps you identify trends and avoid short-term biases.

For example:

• Channel-level insights: Does increasing Meta ads spend consistently result in more demo requests?
• Campaign-level insights: Do PR efforts during product launches correlate with higher sales?

This analysis reveals which activities have the strongest relationships with your goals.

The role of correlation

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but it provides valuable clues about what’s working. For example:

• If LinkedIn impressions consistently rise alongside demo requests, it’s likely this channel is contributing positively to lead generation.
• If an increase in organic traffic doesn’t result in more leads, it may indicate the need for better targeting or content optimisation.

These insights allow you to prioritise high-performing channels and identify areas for improvement.

Tools to simplify the process

While spreadsheets can handle basic correlation analysis, tools like Google Analytics, CRM platforms or attribution software can automate and enhance your analysis:

• Visualise trends over time to spot patterns quickly.
• Generate reports comparing input and output metrics across multiple channels.

If your team has the resources, statistical analysis tools like Python or R can provide more advanced insights into correlations.

Set expectations

It’s important to communicate to stakeholders that correlations are just one piece of the puzzle. 

While they help guide decision-making, they don’t confirm causation. This distinction sets the stage for the next step: testing causality through controlled experiments.

Step 5: Test for causality

Understanding correlations in your data is a great start, but to confidently invest your marketing budget, you need to establish causality. 

In other words, you need to prove that your marketing activities are directly driving the outcomes you care about – incremental leads, sales or conversions – not just coincidental trends.

Why testing causality matters

Correlation can only take you so far. To scale lead generation effectively, you need to know:

• Are your efforts causing growth, or would it have happened anyway?
• Which campaigns or channels have the greatest incremental impact?
• Where can you double down to maximise ROI?

Without causality, you’re left making educated guesses, which can result in wasted spend or missed opportunities.

Methods to test for causality

Here are three practical ways to determine causation in your marketing efforts:

1. Platform-specific lift tests
   • How it works: Platforms like Facebook (Meta), YouTube and TikTok offer built-in tools that split your audience into two groups: one that sees your ads (test group) and one that doesn’t (control group). By comparing conversion rates between these groups, you can measure the incremental impact of your ads.
   • Example: You run a lift test on Facebook for a month. The test group shows a 20% higher conversion rate than the control group, proving that your ads are driving incremental results.
2. Geo-testing
   • How it works: Activate your campaign in specific geographic regions (test areas) while withholding it in others (control areas). Compare performance metrics like traffic, leads or demo requests across these regions.
   • Example: You run LinkedIn ads in Region A but not in Region B. After a month, demo requests in Region A increase by 30% compared to Region B, showing the impact of your ads.
3. Time-based testing
   • How it works: Alternate periods of running and pausing your campaigns. Compare performance during the “on” and “off” periods to isolate the impact of your marketing efforts.
   • Example: You run Google Ads for two weeks, then pause for two weeks. If demo requests drop during the pause, you’ve demonstrated the incremental value of your ads.

Designing effective experiments

To get reliable results:

• Set clear objectives: Define what you’re testing and the outcome you expect (e.g., “Will YouTube ads increase demo requests by 15%?”).
• Control variables: Keep other campaigns and activities consistent to isolate the variable you’re testing.
• Run long enough: Ensure your test runs for a statistically significant period to produce reliable data.

Communicate results clearly

Once you have your findings, present them in a way that resonates with stakeholders:

• Visualise the data: Use charts or graphs to highlight the differences between test and control groups.
• Summarise key takeaways: Clearly explain the incremental impact and its implications for budget allocation.
• Make recommendations: Use the results to advocate for scaling successful campaigns or reallocating spend from underperforming areas.

Keep testing

Causality testing isn’t a one-and-done activity. Make it part of your ongoing strategy:

Embrace failure as a learning opportunity – some tests won’t work, but those that do can unlock significant growth.

Regularly test new channels or tactics to uncover untapped opportunities.

Use experiments to refine existing campaigns and maximise ROI.

Step 6: Forecast and optimise

The final step in confidently allocating your marketing budget is to forecast the future impact of your efforts and optimise your strategy for maximum results. 

This step bridges the gap between analysing past performance and planning for sustained growth.

Why forecasting matters

Forecasting isn’t about achieving perfect accuracy – it’s about providing a clear roadmap for where your marketing efforts are heading. It helps you:

• Set realistic expectations for growth.
• Identify best and worst-case scenarios for performance.
• Make informed decisions about where to place your next bets.

When stakeholders ask, “What will our lead generation look like next quarter?” a well-crafted forecast ensures you have a data-backed answer.

Building your forecast

1. Start with historical data
   Use the trends you’ve uncovered in your past performance to project future outcomes. For example:
   • If demo requests have grown by 10% quarter-on-quarter, use this as a baseline to forecast the next quarter.
   • Factor in the incremental impact of new campaigns or increased spend.
2. Incorporate inputs and outputs
   Build a simple model that connects your input metrics (like impressions or clicks) to your output metrics (like demo requests or conversions). For instance:
   • If LinkedIn impressions consistently lead to demo requests, project how increasing impressions will influence leads.
3. Account for external factors
   Consider variables like seasonality, industry trends or economic conditions that could impact your results. Adjust your forecast accordingly to avoid surprises.

Scenario planning

The board aren’t looking for a single number, they want to see a range of outcomes:

• Best-case scenario: If all campaigns perform at their peak potential, what results can you expect?
• Worst-case scenario: If performance dips, what’s the minimum you can achieve?
• Most likely scenario: Based on historical trends and current efforts, what’s the most realistic outcome?

This approach not only provides a clearer picture but also aligns with how CFOs and boards think about planning.

Optimisation in action

Once you’ve built your forecast, use it as a guide to optimise your strategy:

• Reallocate budgets: Shift spend from oversaturated channels to underutilised ones with growth potential.
• Test new ideas: Use experimentation to validate forecasts and uncover new opportunities.
• Track progress: Monitor performance in real-time and adjust your plan if results deviate from expectations.

Communicating your forecast

Present your forecast in a way that resonates with stakeholders:

• Visual aids: Include charts or graphs that compare historical performance with forecasted outcomes.
• Key insights: Highlight what’s driving your predictions, such as strong channel performance or incremental campaign impact.

Actionable recommendations: Outline next steps based on the forecast, like increasing spend on high-performing channels or testing a new tactic.

Looking ahead

Forecasting isn’t just about justifying spend, it’s about preparing for growth. When you can confidently project future results, you’re better equipped to meet the demands of stakeholders, adapt to changing conditions and scale your lead generation efforts with precision.

You also position yourself as the marketing leader who consistently delivers results. 

This is what sets apart the marketers who smash it – those who stakeholders rely on and the board respects. 

These are the leaders who not only understand the numbers but use them to drive business growth, inspire confidence and secure a seat at the table where decisions are made. 

When you can confidently forecast, optimise, and prove your impact, you become the marketer every organisation wants steering the ship.

Ready to confidently scale your marketing?

If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level but need help getting your attribution strategy in place, we’re here to help. 

Let us work with you to uncover insights, optimise your efforts, and ensure your budget is driving real growth. 

Get in touch today to start the conversation.

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