Lead generation should focus first on creating quality leads, rather than a high quantity. Gain more info than an email address, find out sales trigger pages and activity and offer visitors more to gain trust.
So imagine you’re having a great week, your new marketing strategy was just delivered with a cartload of new contact details from ‘interested customers’. You’ve passed them onto your sales team who are all set to get to work on them and you’re expecting lots of closed deals.
But, did you stop for a moment to consider a few things about all these new ‘interested customers’?
- How, exactly did you get their details?
- Were they aware of your brand prior to the visit that prompted them to leave their details?
- Did their visit suggest window shopping or real interest?
- Have you received multiple site visits from any of those new leads, already?
- Does the new leads data include any existing customers?
You need to be aware of more than just a potential customer’s contact details before they should be considered ready for an approach from your sales team. After all, with auto-fill so readily available, handing out contact details is easy and doesn’t necessarily, by itself, signal a potential customer.
Indeed, it’s a common myth that more leads translates into more sales. Figures from Marketing Metrics show that that the probability of selling your product or service to a new customer is just 5-20%.
Your Lead Generation Strategy Matters
It’s all well and good advertising a draw for a great prize. If the draw is free and the prize is decent, of course most people who visit the page will sign up for it. But, that doesn’t mean they’re interested in your product or service, it just means they’re interested in winning a free prize by simply handing over their email address!
That’s a good example highlighting that quantity is NOT always more important than quality, when it comes to lead generation. In order for you to be able to asses a new lead is genuinely interested in your product and close to making a purchase, you need to do more than offer a free prize.
You need to offer potential customers, or leads, added value when they visit your site and read about your product or service. Encourage those potential customers to revisit your site for updates and relevant information. That way, it’s the potential customer who is initiating the relationship with your brand, rather than you trying to engage with them with the sole reason of closing a sale.
However, while inbound marketing strategies do work, it’s also important to know which of your website pages is a potential trigger point for a new – or returning – customer, to make a purchase. Then, you can work on directing potential customers to those trigger pages. And, once they do visit those pages, that’s a good time to pass their details to your sales team.
Forget the Common Myth that Quantity Beats Quality…
…and focus on building a list of potential customers, or ‘quality leads’. Remember, a ‘lead’ is someone who is a potential customer. And that’s the type of lead generation you need to focus on.
Let’s look at what a quality lead is:
- It’s not just contact information. It’s a collection of relevant information and activity from an interested, potential customer.
- Having a lead who’s information and data points are real and match up.
- Existing customers are also a quality lead – if you treat them well.
How do you behave when you’re thinking of making a new purchase? Of course, there are times when you’ll just dive in and make a purchase. But, in the majority of cases you’ll do research and decide if the brand you’re looking at is reliable, trustworthy and can give you what you need.
So, just because you signed up with your email address, doesn’t mean you’re ready to make a purchase right then. And this is how many shoppers feel and behave.
Case in point, data from HubSpot shows that while 61% of marketers contact all of their leads, only 27% of those will actually be ready for a sales call.
Go Back to Basics with Your Lead Generation Strategy
Once you’ve accepted that more isn’t better and banished that common myth from your mind, you can re-visit your lead generation strategy with building quality leads at the forefront of it. Research which social media platforms are best suited to your target audience.
Then, use their preferred platform as part of a strategy to nurture and keep them interested in your brand, even if it’s just to use you as a reference point. You’re building trust and if those potential leads trust your content, advice and style they’re more likely to trust your product or service when they’re at the point of considering a purchase.
Do your best to provide these three things in your lead generation strategy:
- Give visitors/potential leads added value and reasons to re-visit your site.
- Always make it easy for them to give you their details.
- Add an engaging and differently worded call to action whenever its relevant, which is most of the time!
By taking the time to offer this to all your visitors, you’re more likely to create quality leads who will become customers or clients. Then, even if your lead generation numbers aren’t the highest, your sales conversion rates should benefit from a more targeted and considered strategy.
How do you look at your leads? What do you do with your high quality and low quality leads? Let us know in the comments!
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Read more: Possible Reasons Why Your Lead Generation Numbers Are Not Going Up