Lead generation marketing and Girl Scout cookies? What?
My daughter joined the Girls Scouts recently and unfortunately for my belly, Girl Scout cookie time quickly followed. As a loving father, but with no desire to go door to door, I ordered several cases with the idea of giving (most of) them away at the upcoming lead generation conference, LeadsCon. In the past we have normally given away mints since fresh breath seems like a better cause to fight for than tension through stress relief balls or other wastes of money posing as conference giveaways. Our marketing manager remembered seeing something in the LeadsCon exhibitor contract about food so he shot off an email to double check that it would be ok. This was the highlight of the response originating from the Mirage (so no blame to LeadsCon here in any way).
"Corkage would be $14.25 per dozen (or "sleeve"). Service would be $11.97 (which is 21% of our retail price for 12 cookies @ $57 per dozen). They would be looking at $26.22 per sleeve."
100 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Two sleeves per box. $26.22 per sleeve....... If we wanted to give away my mountain of Thin Mints as a lead generation marketing expense, we were looking at $5244.00. Add on shipping, and I'm sure the union fees of carrying the boxes to our booth since the Mirage probably would force us to pay for that as well, and let's conservatively say $5500 to give away $400 of Girl Scout cookies I already bought.
This is a long story with a short parallel to lead generation marketing and ROI but I think it is a valuable one. As a business owner, sometimes life gives us easy decisions. $6900 all in to hand out a bunch of cookies is just stupid and an easy no. The ROI on handing cookies to potential customers just does not make sense. I think this story itself is a great giveaway though.
If you are going to LeadsCon are you measuring the ROI of the trip? What other lead generation marketing expenses are you paying for but have no clue on if the ROI makes sense? I would encourage everyone who has read this to take 30 minutes next week and look at your budget for your lead generation marketing. Most likely there will be a lot of lines on the report that are clear winners, some that are fuzzy, and maybe a few that are as silly as my Girl Scout cookies.
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