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Every marketer wants to know how well their conversion rates compare with the rest of the industry. Comparing your conversion rates to an industry-wide benchmark is a great way to see where you can improve.
Below, you’ll find an analysis of our own conversion rates, along with the conversion rates of other B2B businesses across the globe. Bear in mind these are guidelines, however, and that conversion rates can vary depending on your industry and the marketing efforts you pursue.
What is a Conversion Rate?
You can calculate conversion rates at any stage of your funnel. Commonly measured conversion rates are MQL-to-SQL (Marketing Qualified Lead – to – Sales Qualified Leads) and SQL-to-Deal. But you can also measure the conversion rate of your website, the conversion rate of your pre-sales meetings, even the conversion rate of your BDRs.
As marketers, we’re most interested in top-of-the-funnel metrics like the number of leads converted into MQLs and the number of MQLs that convert into SQLs. But we could also take a much broader look at the funnel, and calculate the MQL-to-new-business conversion rate to see how effective our marketing campaigns are.
“You can calculate conversion rates at any stage of your funnel”
EngageIQ’s Inbound Marketing Conversion Rates
Here are our inbound marketing conversion rates for every stage of the funnel starting with MQLs.
Funnel Stage | Average Conversion Rate |
MQL > Pre-Sales Meeting | 44% |
Pre-Sales Meeting > SAL | 73% |
SAL > Opportunity | 63% |
Opportunity > Deal | 32% |
How We Define Marketing Waterfall Metrics
In order for you to make an accurate comparison with our average conversion rates, let’s take a moment to clarify how we define each stage of the marketing waterfall.
An MQL or Marketing Qualified Lead is an account that has interacted with our website or content and has the potential to convert.
If the MQL agrees to a Pre-Sales Meeting we view them as a Sales Qualified Lead. That’s because our marketing team or SDRs will need to qualify them in order to book a meeting.
If our sales reps are happy with the lead after the pre-sales meeting and agree to nurture them, they’ll become a SAL or a Sales Accepted Lead.
After a few more meetings, the sales executive will be able to tell whether the lead has a pain point we can solve. If so, the lead will be labelled an Opportunity to close the account. If so, they’ll spend more time nurturing the account.
Opportunities turn into Deals when the account signs the contract
Other Benchmark Marketing Conversion Rates
We aren’t the only organisation to release conversion rate data.
Upscope cover top of the funnel marketing conversion rates in their blog post. Here’s a quick overview of the conversion rates they’re seeing:
Stage | Average Conversion Rate |
Blog visitor > Landing page visitor | 4.5% |
Landing page visitor> Sign up | 11.1% |
Sign up > Buyer | 33.3% |
On Tuesday, 5th March 2019, 573 people landed on the Upscope blog. Of those 573 people, 26 clicked through the main Upscope website. Three of those visitors signed up via the landing page. About one-third of everyone who signs up becomes an Upscope customer.
Kalungi has also compiled conversion metrics from several B2B SaaS startups.
Stage | Average Conversion Rate |
Visitor > Subscriber | 5% |
Subscriber > MQL | 20% |
MQL > SAL | 43.75% |
SAL > SQL | 63.33% |
SQL > Opportunity | 43.33% |
Opportunity > Deal | 31.25% |
There are a few similarities between all of these stats:
- Aim for a 5% conversion rate on your landing page
- Convert 30%-40% of MQLs to SALs
- Turn half of your SALs into opportunities
- Close 33% of those opportunities
How Can You Improve Your Conversion Rates?
The best way to improve your B2B marketing conversion rates is to improve the quality of leads entering your funnel. It doesn’t matter how you attract those leads, whether that’s SEO, PPC ads, ABM, or any other strategy. The better leads you attract, the more likely they’ll convert at every stage of your funnel.
To attract better quality leads, you first need to understand which of your current marketing leads have the highest propensity to buy. That’s why we recommend adding an intelligent intent data platform into your martech stack. By sorting your current leads by intent, you can identify those most likely to buy and then optimise your existing campaigns to target similar accounts.
This strategy is why our marketing conversion rates are higher than some of the other benchmarks we have provided. By using our own intent tool, we can actively market to companies we know are likely to buy and increase the ratio of high-quality MQLs to low-quality MQLs.
Find out more about integrating EngageIQ into your existing martech stack by speaking to one of our consultants today.