The old adage is true:  Time is Money.  The more efficient your process is for developing customers, the higher the ROI on your marketing budget will be.

This month, we’re going to take a look at some of the traditional sources of leads and how much they cost.

How many times have you had the “print is dead” debate with other marketing colleagues? If you’re like me, it’s more times than you care to count.  Yes, there is something to be said for branding. The truth is, though, that your audience is increasingly moving online.

From Marketo:

Advertisers knew this trend was coming as more and more people started moving towards the online world. A recent report released by eMarketer earlier this year states that 2012 would be the year that spending for online advertising would surpass spending for print advertising. In 2011, online ad spending grew 23% in the US, just passing the $32 billion mark, and in 2012 the online ads will grow another 23% to nearly $40 billion. As the spending for online ads continues to grow, B2B marketing professionals need to watch for this development and catch on quickly because we live in an increasingly interactive world, and opportunities to market to your future customers may be lost if this is ignored.

As with anything in branding, the key to advertising is having a consistent presence. That’s hard to do in print if you don’t have a limitless budget. As an example, below is the 2013 rate schedule for one of the number one trade magazines in B2B manufacturing.

Let’s say you wanted to run one full-page ad per month in this trade magazine. Per your company’s brand standards, you are required to use at least a 4-color process. That puts your total spend at $42,855 for the year.

Now, for the sake of this example, let’s say you receive 50 inquiries per month based on your ads. We’re only going to calculate cost per lead, since the ROI on print advertising is so subjective.

• Cost per Lead 42,855/ 600= $71.43

Stop the presses! (Pun definitely intended) That is an outstanding cost per lead. But let’s be real. Based on real-life experience, we know that 50 inquiries per month on a print ad is a bit high. Doable, but high. The bigger problem is the quality of these inquiries. After qualification, your number will probably drop to somewhere around 5-10 real, quality leads per month. 

This is more realistic (minus the cost for qualification):

• Cost per Lead 42,855/ 120= $357.13

Yes, you can calculate ROI and cost per lead for print advertising, but it’s a bit tricky. Your ads need to contain some sort of call to action so that you can track clicks on a specified web page, or something similar. But even then, these are only prospects. They still need to be qualified.

The bottom line:

There is still value in print advertising from a branding perspective. For lead generation, however, it’s debatable. A click on your landing page is a formidable distance from a qualified lead.