“What is a good conversion rate for my lead generation campaign?”
This is a question we get asked a lot at Capterra. Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who fill out a form and become a lead. It's a very useful indicator of how successful a campaign is - so it's no wonder everyone compares their conversion rates to those of their competitors or some supposed universal average.
As with all metrics, you have to be careful not to compare apples with oranges when it comes to conversion rates, and sometimes you end up comparing apples with tennis balls. Conversion rates can vary enormously between different industries, products and advertising channels.
In the area of business software, however, conversion rates are relatively consistent. Based on our own figures and surveys as well as external information, we have compiled some benchmarks that you can use to assess the performance of your campaigns.
Average Conversion Rates in the Software Industry
Because Capterra is a business software advertising channel, our average conversion rate can provide a fairly accurate picture of lead generation in the industry.
Conversion rates on Capterra vary by ad ranking and by which of our 300+ software directories. On average, our PPC advertisers see a conversion rate of 7% .
As with all advertising channels, conversion rates are subject to change. 7% is a good number and we usually advise advertisers to aim for between 5 and 10%. However, some marketing teams have achieved conversion rates of over 20% on our website.
The 7% is also reflected in a study on website conversion rates by MarketingSherpa:
The average website conversion rate for software or SaaS exceeds half of the other korea telegram data industries represented in this study.
At the same time, however, MarketingSherpa stresses that it also depends a lot on how "conversion" is defined in each industry. For example, in financial services, a newly recorded email address may count as a conversion, while in retail, it's everything from name and address to purchasing habits.
To measure success, it's also important to look at conversion rates at each stage of the sales process. Here's what Capterra's software product lead generation campaigns look like:
Average conversion rate at Capterra
It should come as no surprise that top-of-funnel visitors are much harder to convince than those who are later in the buying process. This is evident in the fact that only 7% of web traffic converted to leads, while 36% of those leads resulted in a sales opportunity.
But it's all relative: once you've got that crucial contact information and can use it, you're working with someone who wants to hear from you and learn more about your product . And it's obviously a lot easier to successfully pass on a known prospect to the sales team than it is to get an unknown visitor to fill out a form.