---
title: "Our Fastest Growing Customers are Measuring These 3 Marketing Metrics"
episode: 18
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Bernardo Alves"
guest_title: "Engagement Manager, LeanScale"
date_published: 2023-08-08
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:06:09
word_count: 1142
topics: ["demand-generation", "revenue-operations", "forecasting", "gtm-strategy"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/bernardo-3-marketing-metrics/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# Our Fastest Growing Customers are Measuring These 3 Marketing Metrics — Full Transcript

> Episode 18 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Bernardo Alves.
> Published August 8, 2023 · 00:06:09 · 1,142 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/bernardo-3-marketing-metrics/

## 00:00 — Intro: the 3 marketing metrics that matter

**[0:00]** Bernardo and I are talking about the metrics that matter for marketing. We have three of our top favorites. Bernardo, what's the first one? Yeah, the first one we're going to talk about is create a pipeline to plan. I think a really important part of marketing is creating things that sales accepts and is willing to work on. So having visibility into how they're trending onto a plan and how the function overall is performing in terms of their objectives is critical.

## 00:26 — Metric 1 — Created pipeline to plan, interlocked with bookings

**[0:26]** Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that a lot of marketing teams don't take into account is that they should really have a quota, if you will, to those sales-qualified leads. And that should be aligned with your bookings plan. So whatever your creative pipeline to plan is should feed right into the bookings plan in terms of volume of pipeline and the timing of that pipeline coming in to hit your booking targets.

**[0:53]** Of course, and I think something that is really important to keep in the back of your mind is just understanding that these goals should be set in alignment with sales. The last thing that you want is arguing over, "We delivered you this much, but you only accepted this." Creating those together and understanding how you guys are going to work as a function in order to deliver on that objective is going to lead to a lot of easy collaboration in the future.

## 01:18 — Setting pipeline goals per channel

**[1:18]** And it's your leading indicator. It's going to let you know if you're going to hit that bookings target or not, and if you're going to hit your overall revenue plan or not. I think it's incredibly important. And for most of those executive-level purposes, you can take a look at your creative pipeline as a whole. But I think for marketing departments, it's really important to set a goal per channel. As an example, you may want to have a goal for the SQLs and creative pipeline you expect from events, from paid advertising, from an SDR team to make sure that each of those channels are operating as you expect.

## 01:54 — Metric 2 — Channel productivity & efficiency

**[1:54]** Yeah, of course. And that leads us right into our next metric, which is channel productivity. It's incredibly relevant to look at how is every channel that you're marketing into performing, are there differences in deal size and conversion rates and sales cycle, depending on where people come in and what journey they take. Having a keen eye on what that looks like from a buying journey and the impacts that it represents to the business is vital. My favorite way to look at channel efficiency is how much does it cost to create an SQL and how much does it cost to create a closed one deal?

## 02:34 — Cost per SQL and closed-won → CAC and ROI

**[2:34]** So you should have a very clear dollar value and say it costs us $1,000 to create an SQL and it costs us $5,000 to create a closed one deal. Of course, and that's going to lead you right into some of the kind of joint business metrics that your board is going to be looking for, such as customer acquisition costs and ROI. So being able to have that right at that level will set you up for future metric success as well. And if you see one that's performing really well, it's a really clear indicator to double down on that source.

## 03:07 — Metric 3 — The Lead Impact Matrix

**[3:07]** Yeah, of course, it's going to lead to two easier winnings down the line, and that's ultimately what you want, right? Double down on what matters and cut out the ones that aren't paying off, right? Your stretch for limited resources, especially in a grow efficiently economy. What's the third metric marketing teams need to be looking at? Yeah, I think the next one that is super important to look at is the lead impact matrix, and it goes hand in hand with the channel efficiency.

**[3:34]** If you're not familiar with the lead impact matrix, it's a visualization of how is every channel performing in terms of things that are being created and close one across different kinds of metrics in there. So you matrix two different metrics in order to gauge the efficiency of the overall channel. What I like about the lead impact metrics is it really puts conversion rate against production. So you can see there are a lot of lead sources that may produce a high volume of production, but are very costly and have a very low conversion rate. On the other hand, you may see something with a very high conversion rate, but low volume.

## 04:14 — Scalable vs. finite lead sources

**[4:14]** And in those cases, I think it's important to differentiate between whether it's a lead source you can have an effect on. So can you put more money behind it to get more volume out of that high converting lead source? For some of them you can. Some of them, I think a classic one would be referrals. You have a finite amount of existing customers and a potential network that would refer business. So that might not be something you can put more capital towards to get more out of, but there are definitely others.

**[4:44]** You may have a high converting partnership, and if you invested more in that partnership, you could get more volume at a similar conversion rate. And it really gives you a clear understanding of your high performing and low performing lead sources. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that you have to keep in the back of your mind as you do this is benchmarking against previous performance, understanding that elasticity of how much impact you can have and what that translates to in terms of dollars coming in. And the conversion rate will give you a very clear path of making informed business bets that will yield the biggest outcomes.

## 05:21 — Recap: pipeline-to-plan, efficiency, and the matrix

**[5:21]** So if you're running a marketing team, the three metrics you really need to be looking at, you have to be looking at your created pipeline to plan. You should have goals for creative pipeline. It should be interlocked with the bookings plan that you have aligned with your revenue plan. And you have to be looking at that by channel. Which channel is hitting the targets you expected from them? Then look at the efficiency. How efficient is each channel performing? Do you have opportunities to put more investment on one channel or another, or do you have to pull back on others?

**[5:52]** And if you need a quick way to identify your top and low performing lead sources, put them on a matrix of conversion to production so you can clearly identify where can you press on the gas on a particular lead source, and where might you need to pull back. Renato, thank you. This is great. Thank you, Anthony.