Demand gen budget allocator: Split a budget across channels from your own cost per lead and conversion
Enter a quarter's program budget, how you plan to split it across three channels, and each channel's cost per lead and lead-to-opportunity rate. The allocator returns the opportunities and pipeline each channel buys, the cost per opportunity of each, and what moving a tenth of the budget from the most expensive channel to the cheapest would add at today's rates.
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- B2B marketing budget allocation calculator
Demand gen budget allocator calculator
Worked example, with the default inputs
Split this way, $300k buys about 139 opportunities and $5.55M of pipeline, at $2,162 an opportunity. The events channel has the highest cost per opportunity; moving $30k from it to paid search would add about 4.8 opportunities at today's rates.
leads = budget × share ÷ cost per lead
opportunities = leads × lead-to-opportunity rate
cost per opportunity = channel spend ÷ opportunities
pipeline = opportunities × average deal value
How it is worked out
leads = budget × share ÷ cost per leadopportunities = leads × lead-to-opportunity ratecost per opportunity = channel spend ÷ opportunitiespipeline = opportunities × average deal value
- cost per lead
- what the channel charges, or what you spend, for one lead you would count
- lead to opportunity
- the share of the channel's leads that become sales opportunities
| Paid search | $300,000 × 40% = $120,000; ÷ $150 = 800 leads; × 8% = 64 opportunities at $1,875 each |
|---|---|
| Paid social | $300,000 × 35% = $105,000; ÷ $90 = 1,166.7 leads; × 4% = 46.7 opportunities at $2,250 each |
| Events | $300,000 × 25% = $75,000; ÷ $400 = 187.5 leads; × 15% = 28.1 opportunities at $2,667 each |
| Total | 138.8 opportunities × $40,000 = $5,551,667 of pipeline |
| The shift | $30,000 ÷ $1,875 − $30,000 ÷ $2,667 = 4.75 more opportunities |
Split this way, $300k buys about 139 opportunities and $5.55M of pipeline, at $2,162 an opportunity. The events channel has the highest cost per opportunity; moving $30k from it to paid search would add about 4.8 opportunities at today's rates.
Where the defaults come from
No default on this calculator is a published benchmark. Each is an example input chosen so the arithmetic is easy to follow; type your own.
| Input | Default, an example input |
|---|---|
| Program budget for the period | $300,000 |
| Paid search: share of budget | 40% |
| Paid search: cost per lead | $150 |
| Paid search: lead to opportunity | 8% |
| Paid social: share of budget | 35% |
| Paid social: cost per lead | $90 |
| Paid social: lead to opportunity | 4% |
| Events: share of budget | 25% |
| Events: cost per lead | $400 |
| Events: lead to opportunity | 15% |
| Win rate on opportunities | 25% |
| Average first-year deal value | $40,000 |
What the allocator assumes
It assumes each channel keeps its cost per lead and conversion rate at the spend you give it. That holds for small moves and fails for large ones: in our reading, most paid channels get more expensive per lead as spend rises, because the cheapest audiences are bought first. Treat the shift figure as the case for testing a move, not as a forecast of it.
Cost per opportunity, not cost per lead, is the number to compare channels on. A cheap lead that rarely becomes an opportunity can cost more per opportunity than an expensive lead that often does; the defaults show exactly that between paid social and paid search.
Which numbers to use
Every default is an example input chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow, not a benchmark. Use each channel's own cost per lead and lead-to-opportunity rate from the last two quarters, from the same lead definition your sales team accepts.
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