How much is a lead worth? This is a question I get almost every day. The other question I get is, “How much is a lead going to cost me.” But I think that’s really irrelevant until you know what the lead is worth.

It’s actually very easy to figure out. I’ll just run through the math really quick. You take a business and you say, “What is your average customer value?”

Let’s give an example of business‑to‑business sale. Let’s say they a sell a $100,000 annual contract, or something like that. That’s the top‑line revenue. Then, you want to discount that and take out the cost of goods sold, and take the gross profit. That’s what’s left over.

Let’s just say its half, so $50,000 of gross profit is what a customer relationship is worth. There’s your number. That’s what we’re looking to get to. How do I make sure that I make that $50,000 back?

Then we look at what percentage of people do I close? What percentage of leads come in the door that actually signed a $100,000 contract and I make $50,000 on?

Just for easy numbers, let’s say it’s 10%. That leaves us with $5,000. A lead in that situation is worth $5,000. Now, that would mean that that lead would take 100% of your gross profit, so it’s not a good buy.

We usually discount that by half, and then you’d be doubling your money. If you want to be conservative, you discount it by half again because you’re thinking, “We want to make sure that we’re really getting 1 out of 10 quality leads.”

A lead in this scenario that I just gave would be worth $1,250 up to $2,500.

When you’re doing your numbers, they’re probably not as simple as the ones I just laid out. Look at what your customer value is. What’s your cost of goods sold? What percentage does your sales team actually close?

Then, discount it so you make a profit. Ultimately, you can come up with a fairly easy number that will inform you, “If I can get a lead for this amount of money, it’s a good deal.”

Then you can build all your marketing campaigns around that. You can look at your organic campaign. You can look at your paid campaign. You can look at your print ads. You can track leads from TV or radio. Examine all of your different funnels.

Make sure that you’re hitting or exceeding that target cost per lead that you’ve set for yourself in advance.

This is one of my favorite exercises to do with a customer. I love to help them develop that target cost per lead, and really start building strategies around that. Once you do that, you can harness the power of your business’ engine because you know what makes it tick.

If you’d like some help coming up with your target cost per lead or executing on the campaigns once you go through the exercise, I’d love to be a partner for you and a resource to help grow your business and develop that engine.

At Globe Runner, we pride ourselves on running a different kind of office space. Not only does our headquarters double as a gallery space for exciting artists, but every few months or so we also hold a celebratory blowout and invite the public to come see our new pieces on display.

Globe Runner’s June Artist Exhibition

Last Thursday, June 8, artist Hilda Lafleur and the Globe Runner staff held a gala to show off her colorful, iconic, and pop-inspired work.

Generously, Hilda raffled off two of her paintings, and later gifted one of her pieces to Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty.

We were thrilled to host Hilda and members of the public and we’re excited to be able to look at her exciting work until our next artist rotation.

To see more photos of the event, keep scrolling!

Looking Back at Our Previous Exhibition

Last October, Globe Runner held an exhibition for our previous artist: Alejandro Castanon.

It’s no surprise that mobile is super important. It’s 50 to 60 percent of most of our clients’ traffic volume these days. But, what is surprising is Google’s recent announcement that they would only look at the mobile content for search ranking purposes.

What that means is that if you have a website that your mobile site displays different content than your desktop site, Google will officially start ignoring your desktop content and only showing the mobile content.

Now, we see this a lot on clients that maybe have a “.m” or a “m.” for their mobile site, rather than having a responsive website. On the “m.”, they would have different content. Maybe stripped down content, maybe they eliminate the footer altogether.

They don’t have as big a description, which makes sense from a mobile user point of view. They want to just show you the most important things.

The challenge is if you have a bunch of links to other internal pages in your footer that aren’t showing on mobile, Google won’t be crawl those links anymore.

If you have written content describing your business, Google won’t be looking at that content as part of its search ranking algorithm.

It’ll still display your desktop version for desktop search, but even on desktop search, it’s going to use your mobile site content for ranking purposes.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I know a lot of people in the industry think it’s an odd decision, but that’s the decision, so let’s get used to it and start updating our mobile sites.

Thanks so much reading. Feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.

No matter how shoestring your marketing budget, you can’t afford to not invest in video marketing. Videos are highly shareable pieces of content that capture customers and encourage them to engage with your brand. In fact, marketers frequently report higher conversion rates and increased CTRs when video is used for email and social media marketing purposes.

But your customers aren’t the only ones who’ll look favorably on this rich media content. Google’s algorithms also give extra weight to video, which can ultimately help improve your site’s SEO rankings.

Ahead we’ll make some recommendations about what kind of video content to create and how to do it.

Marketing Video Inspiration

Like all content marketing, you want to use videos to speak directly to your target audience. That means uploading them strategically based on where they’ll get the most airtime.

Here are some places your video marketing content can take center stage:

• Social media accounts – make company announcements, introduce sales, or promote new products across all your social feeds. It’s like show-and-tell for your customers.
• Your landing page – websites that employ this strategy convert like crazy. Just be mindful of your load time.
• Vlogs – blog content is a proven search engine marketing technique. Supplementing the strategy with a few short vlogs (video blogs) a week could give you a serious competitive edge. Plus, you can create your own YouTube channel to syndicate the content and reach a wider network.
• Testimonials – have a handful of happy customers? Add a section of video testimonials to your site. It’s the most personal way to show prospective customers the quality of your work.

Creating Video Content

When it comes to visual content, the most important thing to remember is to keep it authentic. One great way to do that is to shoot marketing video from a smartphone. The screens are large, the resolution is high, and even Hollywood filmmakers are creating movie magic from the palms of their hands.

With the right tools in pre and post-productio, you can make it great without breaking the budget. Here are five focus points to create high-quality marketing videos:

1. Stability. Invest in a tripod or Steadicam. If you’re doing a single shot, prop your phone to the proper levels. If you’re moving around, spring for a device that can keep the video constant, even as you travel.
2. Lighting. Fluorescent lighting never did anything for anyone. If you don’t have access to or a budget for professional camera lighting, use nature’s lighting. Natural lighting can do wonders for your product videos. Golden hour (around dusk and dawn) are notoriously lovely times to shoot, but a brightly lit room with windows can work just as well.
3. Audio. It’s worth springing for a microphone, especially if you are sharing about your brand. Not only will it cut down on ambient noise, but it’ll also give your video a much more put together feel. Make sure to pick some good intro music to introduce and close your video, too. The more seamless and intentional it is, the more professional you’ll sound.
4. Background. Keep the setting interesting, but clean. An all-white background isn’t the only choice you have. Pick somewhere that demonstrates the unique quality of your brand and don’t shy away from colors, especially if they complement your logo!
5. Effects. Whether you use iMovie or software like Adobe Premier, speeding up or slowing down the frames can be an effective way to market your business. For detail shots, try a slow-mo feature. If you’re trying to condense a process try the time-lapse feature.

More and more, we’re seeing smartphones and video marketing dominate the digital landscape. Mobile demands are increasing and since phones also happen to be our most familiar medium, we’re going to continue to see video content as a go-to digital marketing trend.

Looking for a professional videographer to help you with your full-service production and promotion needs? Our marketing team will get your business ready for its close up.

If you’re going to all the trouble to produce a video and put it up on YouTube or Facebook, you want to get the most out of it. I’ve got three simple tips for you to make sure you maximize your efforts. The first one is creating a custom thumbnail.

If you look back at my old videos, you’ll see that I didn’t always do this, and, sometimes, to an embarrassing degree. I captured my very first slide as me with my mouth open, which doesn’t look very attractive.

Making a custom thumbnail is more important than just avoiding an unattractive look on your face. The other thing it does is it sells the click. It sells the user on clicking on your video, so they watch the content that you produced. That image is probably the most important thing that they’ll see.

The next one, not to undermine the value of words, is the title of your video. What that title is describes the video and, once again, sells the user on clicking on it.

Just as importantly, it also tells YouTube what the content of the video is and lets YouTube serve it up for the proper search term. Titling your video properly is incredibly important.

The last tip is native posting. A lot of people will post a video on YouTube and then copy that video and post it again on Facebook. It’s a huge mistake and it loses a lot of traffic.

Facebook actually gives a very strong preference, a 10x preference in fact, to video content that’s posted directly on Facebook. Rather than posting on YouTube and reposting it on Facebook, post it again natively on Facebook. You’ll get as much as 10x the traffic for your organic Facebook video.

With that said, if you’d like some help with your video strategy, feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.

One last thing, if you have any questions that you would like answered, feel free to put them in the comments. I’d love to answer them in a future video. Thanks.