How To Improve The Quality Of Leads: 10 Tips From Experts

Quality leads bring more conversions.

But what exactly does “quality” mean when it comes to leads? In simple terms, these are the people who are most likely to move up the sales funnel from awareness to interest, intent, and conversion.

It’s impossible to find high-quality leads by coincidence. Achieving this goal requires a qualification process that effectively identifies key characteristics that increase the likelihood that prospects will become loyal customers.

We have prepared for you 10 useful tips from experts that will help improve the quality of leads.

 

WHAT IS LEAD QUALIFICATION?

 

 

Lead qualification is the process of determining whether potential customers have the means and motivation to purchase your product or service.

Lead qualification is usually done in the form of questions that depend on the product you offer. For example, insurance companies are interested in the age, current health status, and medical history of a potential client. If you’re selling B2B services, you might want to ask the lead if they’re involved in the decision-making process. If not, then maybe you should talk to someone else.

An effective lead qualification process makes it possible to weed out those who are not currently ready to buy. This, in turn, allows sales teams to focus their efforts on more promising prospects. This approach also makes it easier to run marketing campaigns for leads who aren’t yet ready to buy, keeping them up to date with your news so they can come back to you when they’re ready to take the next step.

 

3 REASONS FOR LOW-QUALITY LEADS

 

Why can’t you attract quality leads? If potential customers are interested in your product, what’s stopping them?

Here are the three most common reasons for poor lead quality.

 

1. Bad PPC campaigns

Are your PPC ads attracting qualified leads ready to buy? If not, then you should fine-tune your campaigns or change your PPC provider.

 

2. Ineffective calls to action and bad offers

Are you covering the entire sales funnel or are you focusing only on the early stages? Are you offering free materials that have nothing to do with your business? Does your site have calls to action? How visible and persuasive are they?

 

3. Lack of landing pages

Are you following generally accepted standards and best practices when creating landing pages? Does the marketing copy really describe the offer? Does it help determine who exactly should fill out the contact form? If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then you should consider adding additional lead qualification fields. Identify your top 3 qualifying questions and include them in your feedback forms.

 

HOW TO IMPROVE LEAD QUALITY

 

1. Define your audience

 

 

To attract better quality leads, you need to understand who your audience is and what they need. Start by creating a portrait of your ideal buyer. Perhaps you need someone who is a decision-maker, has access to capital, and is committed to addressing specific pain points in their organization.

While each company’s ideal audience is different, identifying them goes a long way toward improving the quality of your leads.

Analytical services like Google Analytics help cope with this task.

 

2. Choose the right keywords

 

Choose the right keywords that match what your brand is trying to sell and what quality leads want. This goal can be achieved by examining the keys. See what pops up in search engines when you enter targeted queries. Pay attention to the first lines in the search results and the most popular questions.

Using this data, create content, forms, and offers that reflect customer preferences and align with your offerings.

Use ready-made solutions like Google Ads to find the perfect keywords.

 

 

3. Create targeted content

 

Targeted content helps prevent possible queries and problems. By creating landing pages and FAQ sections that answer the most common questions before sales even contact customers, you make the job easier for your employees. They have more time to achieve increased sales.

Use tools to create online surveys and find out what your target audience wants.

 

4. Use detailed shapes

 

By using detailed contact forms, marketing teams can reduce the risk of low-quality leads being passed on to sales.

First, make sure that all fields on the form are required. These may include the company name, email address, the prospect’s full name, and their position within the organization.

It’s also worth creating forms that allow leads to describe their most pressing pain points and the type of solution or service they’re looking for.

You can use a free online builder to create targeted forms.

 

5. Identify the decision-makers

 

Detailed forms can improve the overall quality of leads. However, they cannot guarantee that decision-makers themselves will get in touch.

To improve the quality of leads, you can identify decision-makers and initiate negotiations. Start by researching your existing clientele. What role(s) do decision-makers in these companies typically occupy? Conduct a lead analysis to find out who holds similar positions and approach them directly. Not only will this improve your overall lead quality (assuming you create compelling content), but it will also make your sales process easier.

To find decision-makers, you can use services like people.ai.

 

6. Use automation wherever possible

 

Today, companies can generate a huge number of leads through both traditional marketing campaigns and PPC. In this environment, it’s easy to lose track of which leads are quality.

To avoid this problem, it is worth automating both the contact and qualification process whenever possible. For example, email marketing tools will allow you to reach many potential customers without forcing employees to manually compose thousands of different emails, and lead scoring software will help you identify potential problems in the collected data that indicate that a person is not ready to buy.

To streamline key tasks, consider using marketing automation software.

 

7. Alignment of sales and marketing activities

 

Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, but they are often misaligned with the lead qualification process.

While the marketing department is focused on generating new leads, the sales department wants to first make sure they are quality leads before investing the time and effort into converting. If salespeople feel like marketers can’t attract good leads and they think the requirements are too strict, then problems are inevitable.

Instead, sales and marketing teams should be aligned from the start. Sit both teams in the same room and discuss what constitutes a quality lead. Think about how to engage him and organize a transfer from the marketing department to the sales department.

Products like Ruler Analytics help achieve this consistency.

 

8. Use referral programs

 

 

 

Sometimes there is nothing wrong with taking the easier route. It’s not necessary to build a list of leads from scratch when you can get referrals from existing clients. Offer them discounts or other incentives – if people really like what your company does, then you can easily start word of mouth.

To simplify this process, use solutions like Referral Factory.

 

9. Track your data

 

To ensure consistency in the quality of your leads, track the conversion of initial and repeat sales. If you notice that one of these indicators is declining, it may be worth reviewing your qualification processes. Make sure your prospects have the means and motivation to make a purchase.

Act-On’s platform can help you track relevant lead data company-wide.

 

10. Make changes as needed

 

Last but not least, don’t get too hung up. If your current lead generation tactics aren’t producing the results you want, make changes. Rethink your keyword strategy, create new content, or expand your target market. In other words, focus your lead generation process on results.

Marketing software makes it easy to make changes and edits to your strategies.

 

LEAD BY LEADS

 

High-quality leads contribute to increased sales conversion. Unfortunately, they don’t fall from the sky, so you’ll have to put in a lot of effort. To attract the best leads, you must find the right audience, target content, track data, and make necessary changes to your marketing strategies in a timely manner. This is the only way to achieve stable sales and high-quality leads.