In a recent blog post on auditing your B2B China digital presence, we have given you step-by-step instructions to gain a better understanding of the current performance of your digital marketing assets within the constraints of Chinese internet regulation. It also provided you with some examples of the goals you should set at a tactical level when defining your B2B digital strategy for China. Having these types of goals in place will keep you on track with your ongoing digital marketing execution.
The goals your define for different channels and tactics of your digital B2B customer acquisition strategy in China depend on your current marketing performance, as well as how many customers you’re trying to attract through direct digital channels. Knowing what your customer acquisition end goal is, will help you work backwards to understand how much traffic and leads you will need to drive to achieve this goal.
So, how do you go about defining your B2B lead generation funnel for China? In the following, we outline the metrics you should set as your key performance indicators and sample calculations to help you establish the metrics for the previous stage in your customer acquisition funnel.
Metric 1: Desired # of customers per year
Let’s assume your goal is to acquire 15 new B2B customers in China over the next 12-month period. Based on this number, identifying metric 2 in your China digital customer acquisition funnel should be fairly straightforward.
Metric 2: # of opportunities needed to achieve customer goal
In our experience, the opportunity to customer conversion rate depends a lot on the maturity of your qualification process as well as your average deal size.
For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume that on average 50% of your opportunities ultimately convert into customers. This would mean that you would need to generate at least 31 opportunities to achieve your goal of 15 customers per year.
Metric 3: # of sales qualified leads (SQLs) required to achieve opportunity goal
Similar to your opportunity to customer conversion rate, your SQL to opportunity conversion rate will depend a lot on how systematic and process-driven your sales process in China is at this stage.
To keep this sample funnel simple, let’s say your SQL to opportunity conversion rate also sits at around 50%. This means you would need to reach at least 63 leads to meet your opportunity target for the year.
Metric 4: # of leads needed to achieve SQL goal
The conversion rate from lead to SQL will depend a lot on the quality of the lead information collected which tends to depend on the buyer’s readiness.
For instance, a prospect in the consideration stage of their decision-making journey is more likely to submit more information than someone who is just at the early stages of gathering information. In this case, the conversion rate would be higher but you will also receive fewer leads at this level of qualification.
Achieving a 10% lead to SQL conversion rate is a good benchmark. If this is the case for you, you would need to deliver 630 leads over the course of the year to reach the target of 63 SQLs for the year.
Please note that this sample funnel doesn’t factor in leads that may come in through partners or other offline channels, so if you have other activity that is fueling your customer acquisition strategy, this needs to be factored into your overall goal setting too.
Metric 5: # of annual website visits needed to reach the lead goal
The website traffic you will need to drive to achieve your lead acquisition goal will depend on your visit to lead conversion rate. Based on a benchmark of 1.5% website visit to lead conversion rate, you would need to drive 42,000 website visits to your site to achieve your lead acquisition goals at the top of the funnel.
It’s important to note that this is an average conversion rate and results may differ greatly by channel. For instance, conversion from organic search tends to be much higher than from paid media. Another reason to make SEO a priority for your Chinese website!
Are you looking for more information to help you define your B2B digital marketing strategy in China? Download our latest guide to help you understand the Chinese digital ecosystem and B2B online audiences.
