Businesses survive and thrive by bringing in leads, and automated lead generation makes being found by the right customers easier. But how much does it cost?
In one sense, finding and nurturing high-quality leads is priceless. That said, lead generation involves setting up and maintaining a complex process, and that definitely does cost money.
Exactly how much it costs depends on a number of factors. Maintenance and training costs, software prices, employee hours, and more all add up.
This blog post will take you through the likely cost of building an effective automated lead generation process, and how ScoreApp can make the whole thing easier and cheaper.
Ready?
What’s involved in creating an automated lead generation process?
Once established and finessed, automated lead generation can be trusted to do its thing with a minimal amount of fuss (although regular A/B testing is recommended). But there are steps to take before you get started.
1. Detailed research and planning
Before you start setting up your automated lead generation, you need to know what your goal is. What are the steps to guiding your leads through the sales funnel? What do you value in a lead? What actions do you want them to take?
By researching your ideal leads and the desired results of interactions, you can create quizzes, qualifying questions, and landing pages that have a real impact.
2. Building automated lead generation
Automated lead generation isn’t just one process. It’s actually a collection of moving parts working together.
A large part of that is working out who your customer is and segmenting and categorising the best leads. Pre-qualifying questions and quizzes are an unbeatable way to find out more about who you’re speaking to, as well as what their problems are and their likelihood to click ‘buy’.
After that, there’s the creation of automated email chains, webinars and landing pages, and ensuring your content keeps those leads warm and engaged.
It’s not a quick process, but ScoreApp gives you the tools that make it easy to get right.
3. Integrating the right tools and technology
A good automated lead generation process has many different parts. ScoreApp is one of them, but we know that it’s better when marketing tools and software works together and not against each other.
That’s why ScoreApp integrates with so many other marketing programs including Slack, Zoom, Mailchimp, Ontraport, Salesforce, LeadFuze, Keap, Unbounce, Hubspot, Gohighlevel, Pipedrive, Insightly, and Zoho.
Chances are your favourite apps and tools are ours too. Whatever system you rely on, ScoreApp integration makes it easy to stay on the same page.
4. Launch and manage your automated lead generation
Turning on your automated lead generation process is only part one of the story. No matter how much you may have workshopped and tested the various elements, the analytics will always throw out a few surprises once it goes live.
It’s likely that you’ll end up changing something you were previously happy with to get better results, including:
- Key messaging
- CTAs
- Subject lines
- Landing page copy
- Quiz questions
It’s important to remember that nothing is set in stone, and evolving your process over time is much better than letting it go stagnant.
5. Follow-up engagement
Automated lead generation is all about follow-up – keeping leads warm and engaged until they eventually hit the all-important ‘buy’ button. And while you’ve got their attention, there’s no reason not to gather feedback on the process itself.
Sending out a quiz on your process is a great way to gather analysis and feedback. Especially if you’re looking to change specific areas like how often you contact leads and how impactful the messaging is.
Factors to consider for automated lead generation costs
There are many different ways you can approach automated lead generation, which means there are also a range of cost factors to consider, including:
1. DIY costs
If you’re thinking about building an automated lead generation system from scratch, then you need to know what it’s going to cost you.
It goes without saying that one of the biggest hits you’ll take is on your time. Time is precious, especially when running a business. Any task that takes up huge chunks of it should not be taken on lightly.
You also need to decide on which digital marketing tools will best serve your business. Most offer tiered pricing, so you can select the package that best fits your needs.
ScoreApp users can kick off with a free tier that gives them one live scorecard, five marketing courses, and over sixty customisable templates to get started.
2. Software and tools
For your automated lead generation to work at its best, you’re going to be relying on multiple software and tools, each with a specific purpose and cost:
- A CRM is essential to keeping track of leads. There are plenty to choose from, with Hubspot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive amongst the most popular. You won’t always get a cost until you book a demo, but Salesforce is upfront that its cheapest option is £132 per user, per month, rising to £400 at the top level.
- Email marketing tools generally charge based on the number of contacts you’re managing. Typically, you can expect to pay somewhere between £10 and £110 per month for a reliable platform.
- Whatever lead magnet you’re using, you’re going to need a landing page building. And if you’re hosting webinars, then you can add the cost of content creation and hosting to the mix too.
- Analytics tools are essential for making sure your message is getting across, and your leads are engaged. While it is possible to pay for third-party tools (anywhere between £15 to £950+), many businesses rely on free platforms like Google Analytics.
ScoreApp’s automated lead generation tools
Using ScoreApp means you can bundle together the features you need from the list above. That means everything is all in one place and for a much lower monthly cost.
And with easy integration into existing CRM and email systems, ScoreApp saves you the cost and trouble of turning your whole process upside down.
Take follow-up emails. By hooking ScoreApp to your existing email marketing platform to automate responses based on their answers to pre-qualifying questions.
3. Hire lead generation professionals
There are plenty of freelance professionals who can add their expertise to your automated lead generation process. Excellent marketing strategy specialists, copywriters, and designers are easy to come by, but the costs add up.
Each freelancer will have their own rate. Some will offer a flat fee for a project, while others charge by the hour, and others by the day. The 2024 Freelancer Rates Report from YunoJuno shows that the average day rate that you can expect to pay for each of these services sits between £355 to £497. That’s a hefty cost per day if you’re engaging multiple people.
Agencies can offer a comprehensive service under one roof, but the cost is likely to run into the thousands (if not tens of thousands) as they cover their costs and overheads.
4. Training and education costs
No matter how many actions and associated software your automated lead generation process includes, your team is going to require training. It might be an email marketing course, or specific to one of the integrated tools.
The subject and level of training will determine the cost. One person taking part in an online course might cost as little as £50. Meanwhile, a representative from a big software company delivering in-depth training could cost several thousand. It all depends on where the skills gaps are and how they can best be filled.
5. Maintenance and optimisation costs
The work on your automated lead generation funnel doesn’t stop once it’s live, and neither does the cost. An operational funnel will need monthly or annual subscriptions for the tools that make it work, as well as ad spending to drive traffic towards your lead magnets.
A/B testing will also show what needs extra attention and time spent updating. That might be your time or a freelancer on the clock, but it will be a regular expense. Automated lead generation funnels can’t stay still if they’re going to stay optimised.
A small business can either take the strain themselves and keep costs to a few hundred pounds per month. Medium-sized ventures that need a more sophisticated automated lead generation system could be looking at monthly outgoings of thousands of pounds.
Build affordable, automated lead generation with ScoreApp
ScoreApp gives you everything you need to create an automated lead generation process, whether you’re relying on the built-in tools or complementing existing software.
With effortless integration, inbuilt analytics, A/B testing and more, ScoreApp lets you create an automated lead generation system that gets results – and you can even start for free.
Build your automated lead generation process today, with ScoreApp.
