How to calculate inbound marketing analytics and impress your boss

We know that marketing can sometimes be a thankless job, so why not arm yourself with some belting inbound marketing analytics before attending your next big meeting? With the right facts and figures, you can prove how much the marketing department really contributes to your business.

Customer acquisition cost

Your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the average amount your company spends to acquire a new customer.

It’s important you know this figure as it forms the basis of your marketing department’s outgoings (it will also help you to calculate other inbound marketing metrics!) Your CAC shows how much you are spending for every new customer acquired, and an increase could imply a problem with your marketing process.

Now before you ask, there is no one ideal CAC. This can vary dramatically depending on your industry, and the type of product or service that you’re offering.

However, it’s generally the case that B2B leads will come with a higher CAC. Products are often expensive, complex, based on a subscription model, and decisions are often made by a number of people within management or on the board.

Don’t trust any marketing agency that promises you quality inbound leads for an exact set price – that’s not how it works. An inbound CAC depends on the quality of your content, the socialness of your social, the competition of your PPC terms….

To work out your customer acquisition cost:

1. Choose a period of time you want to look as
2. Calculate your total sales and marketing costs (including ad spend and overheads)
3. Divide step 2. by the number of new customers acquired during period 1.

Time to pay back customer acquisition cost

The time to pay back customer acquisition cost, what a mouthful! This shows how long on average it will take your company to earn back the costs spent on acquiring new customers.

In other words, this inbound marketing metric is the basis of your company’s income. It tells you the revenue made once you account for the costs you have incurred along the way.

In industries where your customers pay a monthly or annual fee, you normally want your Payback Time to be less than a year. The less time it takes to payback your CAC, the sooner you can start turning a profit from your new customers.

To work out your Time to Payback CAC:

1. Calculate your CAC
2. Calculate the average margin-adjusted monthly revenue for a new customer.
3. Divide step 1. by step 2.

Marketing influenced customer percentage

Your marketing influenced customer percentage takes into account all of the new customers that interacted with your marketing while they were leads. This can occur at any point during the sales process.

This figure helps to show the impact of marketing on leads across the whole buying cycle. It can indicate how effective marketing is for generating new leads, nurturing existing leads and even helping sales teams to close deals.

To work out your marketing influenced customer percentage: 

1. Count all the new customers your company accrued over a set period of time.
2. Count all the new customers that interacted with marketing while they were a lead.
3. Divide step 2. By step 1.
4. Change that fraction into a percentage (e.g. 0.5 becomes 50%)

Want to learn more about inbound marketing analytics?

Our free guide gives you the lowdown on six inbound marketing metrics which can impress your boss, and even more importantly, help your business.