You're Investing in Your Leads, But Are They Investing in You?

Marketers become fixated with click-through rates, keyword rankings, and newsletter sign ups—constant surveillance of these metrics is a huge part of their job. However, many don’t realize that an increase in these parameters doesn’t necessarily translate to an increase in sales. 

A variety of methods exist to bring in new leads, whether through flashy discounted offers, popups asking for customer information as soon as they land on a website, or outsourcing to lead generation sites. But is gathering leads truly the goal for most companies? 

When the head of sales comes to the marketing exec, saying they’re not getting enough leads, or a sales rep is frustrated with their inability to convert these leads into paying customers, the solution isn’t necessary to get more leads—it’s to get the right leads. Marketers should be concerned with their ratio of leads-to-first-meeting, or in other words, the number of sales-qualified leads (SQLs) they’re bringing in.

This means properly vetting and filtering leads by implementing marketing tactics that are going to reel in people who have a high chance of becoming customers instead of drawing in people who may provide their information, but end up having minimal interest in what you have to offer. But how? No marketing team sets out on their advertising campaign trying to bring in uninterested leads. For example, a company selling hair accessories isn’t placing ads in front of Bob the Bald Guy, but there still may be other ways in which marketing efforts can be inefficient. 

Let’s say your target audience is someone like Bob the Bald Guy—that is, men who want to grow hair, but when you send out ads, one of your keywords is “hair products for men”. Sure, this keyword phrase will reel in men who want to restore the glory days of their hair, but it will also reel in a load of other people. This could include men who are looking for a gel to hold their hair in place, a conditioner to make their hair softer, or some product to aid in getting rid of their dandruff woes—that keyword phrase is simply not specific enough.

Take another example concerning website popups. This method of collecting customer information is nowhere near dead. In fact, users of the email capture tool, Sumo, have collected over 23 million email addresses and counting. And that’s amazing—there is no doubt that many businesses have found value and profited from using pop ups as a lead generation tool. But when they’re not used effectively, they can wind up bringing in the wrong leads—or even aid in driving them away. 

Let’s say we have a customer who goes to a website to check out an article—and this is a great article. It’s extremely informative, well-researched, and this customer is eager to read every word. But just as her eyes begin to scan over the first few words, she gets hit with a popup asking for her email and she hasn’t even been on the site for 10 seconds. Slightly annoyed, the customer tries to find the “x” in the top right corner of the popup to click so that she can get back to reading this promising article, but alas, she finds there is no exit button—at least, not until she leaves her email. 

This may not seem like too big of an ask from a marketing standpoint, but from the customer’s POV, she’s only been on the site for 10-20 seconds now and has yet to get the value she was looking for. So, best-case scenario, she quickly types in her email and now we’ve got her information. She may engage with our emails and become a lifelong customer, but she also may just let our emails collect dust—we don’t know much about her as a lead at this point. She could also simply type in a dummy email or, worse, get annoyed enough by her inability to click out of the popup and decide she can find a better article on a better site. 

But what if instead of trying to coerce an email out of her, we gave her more of a choice? What if she was able to click out of the popup, read the article, and was then presented with another piece of similar content or a product offer at the end of the article? Now, we’d be able to see if she’s someone who is truly interested in becoming a customer or if she just meant to stop by the site for a quick visit and continue on her way.

Specificity and interest are crucial when generating leads. It’s not enough for leads to fit some generalized, ambiguous criteria. The best leads are hungry for more information—their searches are specific, they’ve been hunting on several sites, they’ve signed up for webinars, they’re going to trade shows—they are ready to invest. The best of your marketing efforts need to go towards tracking these kinds of leads and coming up with more innovative ways to capture them. Doing so not only makes your marketing more effective, but it also improves the ability of your sales team to do what they do best, and in the end, everyone, including your new qualified leads, benefits.