Clients hire agencies with an expectation of seeing strong returns on their investments in advertising, marketing and PR for their companies. What they don’t always expect is the amount of time and patience that may be required before they see a significant return on that spend.
When it comes to setting confident yet realistic expectations for agency clients, the length of the client’s own sales cycle can impact how rapidly their desired results are achieved, and this can vary from industry to industry.
Here, nine members of Forbes Agency Council share how the typical length of the sales cycles in their clients’ industries impacts the timeline for measuring the ROI of the campaigns they create and execute for them.
Forbes Agency Council members share how the length of the sales cycle in nine industries affect their timelines for marketing ROI.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. D2C Brands
Our clients, emerging D2C brands, have a fairly quick sales cycle. The ROI is immediate. However, the most successful clients are not focused on ROI today. Instead, they look at the customer lifetime value, which has the net effect of lengthening the sales cycle. These clients are willing to pay a premium to acquire the right customers because they know those customers will come back. - Brook Shepard, Mason Interactive
2. Enterprise Tech
Long sales cycles in enterprise tech make it very tricky to properly attribute ROI from marketing-generated leads. Working with clients to clarify the anticipated sales cycle and buyer journey for each campaign helps both client and agency get a better sense of how the campaign is performing through various lead stages. Integrated marketing automation and customer relationship management simplifies tracking and reporting. - Renee Yeager, Yeager Marketing
3. Power Equipment
We serve many clients in the power equipment space, which has definite sales-cycle seasonality based on spring and fall selling windows. This trend affects our annual budgeting, revenue recognition and media planning. At the beginning of each year, we plan media budgets to account for seasonal promotions and customer demand. Campaign reporting, including ROI, follows accordingly. - Stephanie Shreve, PowerChord
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4. Legal Marketing
We are in the legal marketing space. Lead times vary from 15 days to 90 days, depending on the firm size. We track our leads daily and conversions from those leads to clients. With a good dashboard, you can track this information; you just need to have it all automated, from lead source to final sale. - Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
5. B2B Public Relations
B2B public relations sales cycles range from 30 days to six months to a full year. We know that we need to be top of mind with our target clients when it matters most. This is why we focus on pain points we know all CMOs and founders face, and we keep a steady drumbeat with our efforts versus large peaks of advertising. The ROI shows up in the engagement with our content and the conversions. - Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
6. Facebook Ads
With Facebook ads, we have many e-commerce clients who are looking for daily ROAS goals to be met. We also have clients who are focused on lead generation, and a closed sale may happen two to three months down the road. For the longer sales cycles, it’s always important to discuss this prior to running ads because it lets you know the timeline you are on prior to making changes that will affect the ads. - Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint
7. Manufacturing
The manufacturing sales cycle can be long, from six months to five years. Savvy B2B buyers constantly research their options, so multiple touch points and content sent over time from a potential supplier are important, especially if your brand isn’t well-known. The best way to measure ROI is to use marketing automation to track each touch point, from the beginning of a relationship all the way through the first sale. - Megan Devine, d.trio marketing group
8. Entrepreneurs
Our agency specializes in promoting entrepreneurs and utilizes the fast-paced media world to market clients internationally. The turnaround for a story to be published is typically only a week or two, with clients often seeing ten times return on just one news story within the month. - Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR
9. Pro Services
In the pro services space, we focus on the 95-5 principle: 95% of potential buyers are not ready right now, but 5% will be. So, we encourage our clients to commit to long-term actions that will give them top-of-mind presence with the 95%. Clients point to the 5% as proof of ROI. But I know that those in the 5% today used to be part of the 95% who once were not ready. Long-term strategies win. - Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
