When it comes to crafting a successful marketing campaign, too many people focus on the numbers of traffic involved, instead of the quality of those potential customers. Generating leads that are more likely to convert into buyers is essential, so it is no big surprise that it is a top priority for the majority of marketers, as is evidenced in the graph from Ascend2 below. Despite this, many businesses fail to take the time to qualify leads properly; a study by MarketingSherpa found that only 56% of B2B companies verify leads before passing them to the sales team. With this in mind, it perhaps isn’t quite so surprising that, according to research from Econsultancy, just 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Clearly, there is still much improvement to be done when it comes to lead qualification strategies.
Quality Over Quantity
A recent study by HubSpot found that 71% of companies say that closing more deals is their top sales priority. It may seem somewhat counterintuitive then to reduce the overall amount of leads entering your sales pipeline; traditional marketing relies on focusing solely on attracting as many leads as possible, but in reality this won’t do your business any favours. When it comes down to it, quality is the most important factor in the likely success of your campaigns – trying to get every single lead that comes your way to convert will not only end up being incredibly frustrating, it’s also a terrible waste of your time and resources. Instead, by learning enough about the potential client in the first instance, you’ll be able to determine whether or not you should continue targeting them, and ultimately focus your attentions on those that are more likely to close on potentially lucrative deals.
Key Factors in Lead Qualification
There are a number of different possible factors involved in the lead qualification process, and ultimately it is up to you to decide which are the most helpful to your business. These might include:
- Budget – Often one of the best places to start is looking at whether or not a potential customer is actually likely to be able to afford your product or service. By gaining access to their financials such as revenue and/or sales volumes, you’ll have a much clearer idea of if you’re on the same track.
- Behaviour – Check your analytics and look at things such as the customer’s response time, open and click through rates and views. These things will give you a good idea of how keen they are; for example, if one lead visits numerous pages on your site, reads all of your emails and responds to CTAs, and another visits just your homepage and rarely opens your emails, which one would you rather focus on?
- Authority – Does the contact that you have actually have the power to make buying decisions for their company? Having a chance at a lucrative deal means very little if you’re not able to get through to the people who can give it the go ahead.
- Lead Source – This can play an important role in lead qualification as it can help to ascertain how genuine visitors to your site are. For example, if you notice new sessions being registered in your analytics or CRM data from sources such as Quora or Github, it’s safe to assume that the person was searching for answers before landing on your page, making the quality of such leads pretty decent.
- Timeline – Having some indication of how soon your lead is likely to buy is a good way to make your marketing efforts more efficient – you’ll be able to priorities those who are planning to make a purchase sooner, and those who aren’t can be put on the back burner for now.
- Demographics – Finally, a crucial aspect of lead qualification involves taking a more thorough look at the company’s demographics, and how well they fit with your brand and your product. This involves asking questions about the industry they’re in, where they’re located, and the size of the company, to name just a few.
Next Steps – Putting it into Practice
Once you’ve collected the data to weed out those leads that are unlikely to be fruitful, you’ll be able to create better segmented marketing campaigns based on level of interest and where they are in the sales process, and producing personalised content in doing so. Using these two factors can be extremely beneficial; take a look at the image below from Emedia showing the most effective email tactics according to marketers. The statistics certainly back up this opinion; according to the DMA, segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue, and research from Monetate found that marketers see an average increase of around 20% in sales when using personalised web experiences.
After sending out your campaign, don’t forget the importance in studying the metrics in order to establish what worked and what didn’t. Research by HubSpot shows why knowing about your KPIs is crucial; according to their study 74% of companies that were not exceeding their revenue goals did not know their visitor, lead, MQL or sales opportunities. By taking the time to develop a clear understanding of this data, you’ll be able to build up a clearer picture of why leads that left your sales pipeline did so, and how to prevent this happening in the future.
Take the Work Our of Lead Qualification with Global Database
If you’re looking for a quick and cost-effective solution to the challenge of constant funnel optimisation, Global Database is perfect. Our innovative online platform offers a range of methods to narrow down your contact lists, so you can focus on targeting your ideal buyers. Our service comes with a range of benefits, such as:
- Authoritative Sources – Our data comes from various well-respected sources, including Companies House, Stock Exchanges, and public filings. Our patented web-crawling technology also adds and updates records in real time, and we even have a team of in-house employees to manually check and add data.
- Accurate Data – According to Emedia, a lack of high quality data/lists is the biggest obstacle to successful B2B lead generation for 42% of marketers. Thankfully, our users don’t have this worry; our thorough and consistent verifications mean that we have one of the highest accuracy ratings in the industry, along with an email deliverability rate of 93% – something that our competitors cannot claim.
- Filter Options – Global Database’s directory allows you to easily filter contacts by sales volumes, employee numbers, office locations, and more – so you can be sure that you’ll easily be able to target the most relevant leads for your brand.
- Daily Updates – With thousands of new contacts added every single day you’ll never have to worry about your pipeline running dry; and with access for a whole year included as standard, Global Database is fast becoming an essential resource for market leading companies worldwide.
- Direct Contact Details – We only include direct email addresses and phone numbers in our records, so your sales team won’t have to worry about gatekeepers again.
Want to find out more about what Global Database can do for your business? Visit us at www.GlobalDatabase.com