Perhaps one of the most frequently asked questions by sales and marketing teams is how they can improve the quality of their leads – the problem being that most of their leads make it some way down the sales funnel, consuming precious sales time, without ever generating a sale. By Marketingsherpa’s measure that number is a staggering 73% on average, bringing the efficiency of their sales pipeline down to just 27%.
While 100% efficiency in a marketing and sales funnel is an unrealistic pipe dream, improvements can be made to the marketing and sales process that drive efficiency steadily higher. Here are three proven ways to help you improve the quality of the leads that you hand off to your sales organization:
Allocate marketing spend toward higher performing campaigns
Marketers that measure campaign performance are able to more effectively and efficiently accomplish goals. The following 5 steps can help marketers accomplish that, regardless of any system they might use. Whether they seek higher lead volumes, more leads of a particular type, or more revenue or profit per campaign, variations on these steps can help marketers accomplish their goals:
- Set up a system to track the lead source for all leads:
- Add up the total cost of each campaign for a specific period:
- Add up total revenue brought in by leads from each campaign for the same period:
- Calculate the profitability of each campaign:
- Scale up profitable campaigns (where revenue > costs):
- Re-evaluate unprofitable campaigns (where costs > revenue):
Your leads start their journey toward finding you with paid and unpaid channels, which might consist of your website, CPC ads, email campaigns, trade shows, social media, referrals, and more. Whenever you receive a lead or list of leads, take a note of what the lead’s source was. Vtiger automatically stores the source of each lead when they come in from webforms, social channels, or emails.
Sum the fixed and variable costs associated with each campaign. For instance if you were running a 20% discount announcement promoted through direct mails, email, social, and CPC ads, you might have to hire a copywriter and graphic designer to create the content at a fixed cost. Afterward, printing, postage charges, email campaign, and CPC ad costs will vary based on the number of leads you target, and clicks you receive.
For each campaign, sum the total revenue brought in by its leads, for the same period for which you calculated the costs.
Subtract total revenue (step 3) from costs (step 2) for each campaign
After identifying the most profitable campaigns, scale them up to reach more customers while remaining profitable. It may make sense to reduce the budget of less profitable campaigns to scale more profitable ones.
When a campaign proves to be unprofitable, evaluate why it might be falling to generate a profit and redesign the campaign in order to generate a profit.
Get more qualified leads and lead data with web-to-lead forms:
The Force gives a Jedi the ability to read minds. Marketers, on the other hand, have to ask questions to know what’s in a lead’s mind. Web-to-lead forms are one way to capture data about your leads on their journey to being a customer, and here are some best practices for optimizing their engagement rates:
- Get rid of unwanted fields:
- Ask the right questions:
- Guarantee privacy:
A study has found that webforms with 5 fields has better conversion rate than the ones with 9 fields. Eliminate fields that does not bring any value at that stage of buying. For instance, get rid of postal address field when you are not shipping anything to that address right away. Asking for phone numbers causes 5% dip in conversion rate; instead provide a number for them to contact you.
Your web form should gather enough information required to qualify a lead. Ask for Name and Email address for further follow-ups. Ask for Company name and website to research and gauge how your product fits into their company’s needs. Asking for the role helps you identify decision makers.
Leads don’t like to be spammed or want their information shared with others. Assure them that the information they share will not be misused.
Nurture leads with personalized engagement
According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads. There is, however, no one-size-fits-all lead nurturing campaign that marketers can use.
With Vtiger CRM, lead nurturing is a breeze. You can filter and segment leads into lists using any lead data, and can then send those lists highly targeted lead nurturing email campaigns. When a lead engages with the campaign by clicking on a link or sending a reply, autoresponder campaigns automatically send the most logical follow-up email message to keep the lead moving through your sales pipeline.
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