Want to justify marketing dollars and increase sales? Then take a closer look at how to analyze web data and integrate it into the lead generation process.

Any company that relies on leads knows that lead quality can vary greatly depending on a number of factors. Lead source -- banners, paid search, email -- in particular can have a tremendous impact on the quality of the lead.

What if you could see not only how effective your external campaigns were at driving leads, but also how effective they were at driving qualified leads that turn into sales? Or, even better, just how good they were at driving revenue?

The technology now exists to allow for such analysis.

Let's look at the automotive category, which has been particularly bullish on analyzing campaign effectiveness beyond the lead.

Automotive sites regularly look at web analytics data to discover ways to optimize pages, processes and applications in order to improve the online business. While various metrics are used as key performance indicators, lead submissions are by far the most watched and coveted metric.

Leads show a significant level of interest by the user. But you can't assume that just because a campaign is driving plenty of leads, it's a successful campaign. One campaign may drive fewer leads but more orders, while another campaign may bring in a great number of leads, but less actual revenue.
 
So how can a company track a lead after it has been submitted to the site? Consider these basic steps:

Step 1. Tag each lead. At the heart of this solution is what my team calls a "lead ID." The lead ID is generated by the site for each lead that is submitted. Those leads, complete with ID, are then loaded into a web analytics system.

Once that is done, other metrics can be tied back to the individual leads.

Step 2. Decide what key performance indicators (KPIs) to track beyond the lead, and gather offline data. The second step is to decide what KPIs you want to track in addition to leads. At the least, you'll want to track number of orders placed by the leads, and the revenue generated by the leads.

The auto industry has also been keen on tracking just how quickly a lead responded to an offer. Leads that respond within a few hours tend to have a vastly higher conversion rate than those that responded after a day or more passed. Knowing which campaign results in leads that respond quickly can be vital.

We realize that for industries such as automotive or B2B, which generate leads online but sell offline, gathering offline data such as number of orders and revenue can be challenging.

If you're lucky, you already have systems in place to gather the data. If not, you might explore some best practices in the industry and begin gathering such data. For example, you might begin providing discount codes with each lead. When someone shopping for a car brings that discount code to the dealer, the code is linked to the lead ID they submitted on the site, and that can be tied back to the lead. Or you can simply use match-back data, where information submitted in a lead -- such as name and address -- and information submitted at the point of sale are matched back to each other.

Step 3. Import the offline data back into the system. This lets you see exactly how well your banner ads, search keywords, onsite offers and other promotions really did: Did the campaign with the most leads actually generate the most sales and revenue? Are some leads not pulling their weight when it comes to actual sales? Once you have this information, you can be more discerning in deciding how to allocate your marketing spend.

Interestingly, our experience with many of our clients has shown that often the campaigns that drive the most leads also drive a proportionate amount of sales and revenue. Sometimes, however, they do not.

You can't afford to make the assumption that just because a campaign is generating a lot of leads, you're generating a lot of revenue.

C-level executives are demanding to know whether their marketing dollars are bringing an acceptable return. This offline sales integration technique is the kind of data that helps justify marketing dollars, and increase sales.

The key in any case is to analyze beyond the lead.

Alex Hill is senior manager of the automotive consulting group at Omniture. Read full bio.