Inbound marketing is trumpeted as having one of the lowest costs per lead of any marketing medium – approximately 61% less than outbound leads, on average.

But what actually impacts that cost per lead?

At its simplest, total cost of a lead through inbound marketing is found by calculating your input costs in earning that lead. Sounds simple and straightforward – and it is – but it may help to identify some of the costs that go into inbound marketing that perhaps you haven’t factored in.

Management Fees

If you’re paying someone to manage and execute your campaign, these fees will factor into the cost of generating leads. It’s important to remember, though, that even if you’re managing the campaign yourself, there’s still a management cost – your time! Time you spend on your campaign and not on other business activities represents an opportunity cost, and should be factored into the total cost of the leads generated.

Software Costs

To have a successful campaign, you’re going to need some tools to implement and measure with. If you were to invest in these tools yourself, they would cost at least a few hundred dollars a month. When you tap into an agency, they’ve already sunk cost into these tools and factored a portion into your quote, so you won’t have to shoulder the entire burden of buying it yourself.

Content Production Costs

To have great content to market, you’ll need to pay someone to create it. Factored into the cost of a lead is the payment that goes to content creators like writers, videographers and designers. This is, of course, a necessary cost – without content, inbound doesn’t happen. As with management fees, even if you’re creating this content yourself, you should factor in the time you spend and the cost of that time.

Content Promotion Costs

Getting your content out in front of your audience takes time – and occasionally, you may leverage media buys or need a bit of cash flow for prominent placement. Without promotion, that content you’ve created won’t perform properly, so it’s crucial to factor in this cost when determining your total cost of a lead.

There are, of course, other miscellaneous costs involved in the inbound marketing process (like your web hosting and maintenance), but these five are the key to consider.

But while the costs may look daunting when laid out in a list, it’s important to be reminded that inbound marketing has one of the lowest costs per lead of any marketing medium. Tweet This

We invite you to compare the difference – how much are YOUR outbound leads costing you? How much could you make by adopting inbound as a strategy?