Too often I’m afraid we talk about and focus on things like:

• driving traffic to our websites
• generating greater awareness
• expanding our reach
• building brand equity

…as if these are the starting (and end) points to an inbound or social media marketing plan.

“What’s the purpose of your site?”

“Why, to generate qualified leads,” comes the reply.

Sounds good. But then you start to wonder, “how are you going to generate the leads…and how many leads do you need in order to hit your revenue target?”

“Revenue target?”

Objective Driven Logic

I was speaking with a B2B client about setting goals from the bottom up – beginning with revenue goals. And from there working out how many new customers, leads and prospects you’d need (based on avg. revenue per customer and conversion rates) to support it. “Oh yeah,” she said, “objective driven logic!”

“Objective driven logic,” I agreed. Instead of starting at the top of the funnel and focusing on how much visitor/prospect traffic you could dump in there, let’s start at the bottom. Let’s first determine how much new monthly revenue  you want to achieve with your inbound marketing strategy. Then we’ll work our way up to the top of the funnel to set sales goals, lead goals and finally, traffic goals. And, along the way we’ll gain some insights as to how to execute and measure against the plan.

Try This Inbound Marketing Traffic Calculator

Pete Caputa of HubSpot wrote a blog post on Calculating How Much Website Traffic You Need to Hit Your Monthly Revenue Goals which has formed the basis for the Excel calculator I’ve developed. I encourage you to review Pete’s post as you simultaneously try out this calculator (download links below). The calculator will assist you to logically determine that, as Pete correctly argues:

Revenue Goals Determine Sales Goals Determine Lead Goals Determine Traffic Goals

Here’s a screen shot of what the calculator looks like:

Download the MS Excel 2003 (.xls) version of the Inbound Marketing Traffic Calculator (PC users right click, save link as)

Download the MS Excel 2007 (.xlsx) version of the Inbound Marketing Traffic Calculator (PC users right click, save link as)

If you have any problems with the download or questions please email me: greg (at) zephyrmarketing (dot) net. Also email me, if you want the password to unlock the cells so you can modify the formulas or change the text.

Good luck and have fun with the calculator.

Now you can ask the question: “How do we generate that kind of traffic?”

Ah-ha, now that’s a great question…along with how to develop compelling offers, landing pages and lead nurturing campaigns to convert….

Additional Resources/Related Posts:

• Social Media for CEOs: It’s NOT about the ROI
• Website Conversions: Not a Game of Chance
• Calculating How Much Website Traffic You Need to Hit Your Monthly Revenue Goals
• Are Your Compelling Offers Actually….Compelling?
• How to Build Your Inbound Marketing GamePlan
• Key Ingredients of a Social Media Marketing Mindset
• HubSpot’s Lead Generation Marketing Hub of Resources
• Set your ideas free and watch them grow