Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of a successful business — and also one of the most highly debated topics (especially between sales and marketing departments).
In fact, 61% of B2B marketers think generating high-quality leads is one of their biggest challenges. This leads a solid segment of the marketing population to believe that quantity is the way to go.
In this article, we'll compare high-quality leads vs. high-quantity leads to see which one you should focus on for your marketing and sales strategies.
Comparing Quality vs. Quantity
As we mentioned earlier, several marketers believe that the quantity of leads is more important to focus on than quality.
It makes sense on paper. It's much more exciting to hear that your agency's contact rates are generating 10,000 leads rather than generating 100 good leads. This can lead to a cycle of inefficiency if the client also believes that more is better.
But the simplest fact to remember remains about mixed-quality leads: only a very small percentage of those leads will actually become customers. It not only wastes the time of those generating the leads, but it also gives the sales team the task of chasing leads that go nowhere.
However, companies are beginning to understand how much more a quality lead is worth.
Defining a High-Quality Lead
A quality lead should have two things:
- Clear intent to buy your product or service
- Cash and authority to make the purchase
Although it sounds simple in theory, this clear definition is often muddied through the marketing funnel. Many marketers think that when a person clicks on an ad or fills out a form, it means that the user has a clear intent to purchase their product or service.
In reality, that's not always the case. There is an infinite amount of reasons why they could have clicked an ad, like:
- They were window shopping
- They were promised a free gift on a landing page in exchange for filling out a form
- Their internet browser automatically filled out their details (making it easy for them to click)
- They could be very early in the buying process, meaning they aren't ready to purchase until they have more money or time
- They gave fake info to get the free gift
- They were misled about what your product is about
- They accidentally clicked your ad
- They were bored
You can see where this is going. To automatically classify every single one of these "clicks" as a genuine lead with a clear intent to buy would be a mistake.
Very few of them have the potential to actually become customers.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Once you start prioritizing high-quality leads, they will inevitably begin costing more than the low-quality leads we described in the last section.
Especially if you're offering a high-ticket product, the market will be smaller than those of a cheaper product, which means it will take longer to find the right groups to target to get those perfect leads.
To lower your CPL in the long run, there are a few things you can do:
- Provide as much information as possible to help find the ideal prospect
- Optimize your funnel by segmenting your leads
Although you might be paying a few more dollars per lead, it will be worth it in the long run.
How to Consistently Generate High-Quality Leads
Generating high-quality leads is easier said than done, but you can fine-tune your lead generation strategies for better results. Let's look at a few.
1. Target the Right People
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but it's important to cover nonetheless. The more detailed you can define your target audiences, the better chances you'll have of creating more high-quality leads in the long run.
The simplest way to do this is by researching every detail of your customer base, then providing this information (in equal detail) to whoever is in charge of generating your leads.
Be specific when you ask questions about your ideal customer for your research. Some examples of information can include:
- What age demographic converts well for your product
- What gender your customers predominantly are
- The ideal average income of your customers
- Whether your target market are homeowners or not
- What their marital status is
- What their level of education is
- What their occupation is
- How they think in regards to their personality, attitude, values, hobbies, and behaviors
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The more you can hone in on the people you're targeting, the better your platform's algorithm can find your customer base.
Don't make the mistake of skipping this step because you think you're familiar with the niche. Doing the proper research and asking the right questions can lead to much better results down the road.
2. Add an Educative Part to Your Sales Funnel
One effective strategy for acquiring more high-quality leads is by educating your customer about the product in your marketing funnel (without pushing a hardcore sales pitch on them).
You can do this by using an advertorial or some kind of long-form sales copy. By doing this, you can equip your leads with all the information they need before committing to a purchase.
In your copy, there are three things you need to give your potential prospects:
- More useful information than they had before (leaving them better off)
- A guarantee that your product or service is legitimate
- An insatiable hunger for your product that leaves them unable to imagine their life without it
All of these can be accomplished with good copy. However, the best advertorials and long-from advertisements don't come off as desperate to sell the product.
An effective advertorial should have mostly (80%) useful, original, and informative content while only having around 20% stealthy product promotion.
This is done by pulling readers in by using emotion and touching pain points, then slowly enticing the reader towards the one existing solution to the problem — your product.
Also, remember to inform the reader about the benefits rather than the features. A feature is simply a part of your product or service, while the benefit is the actual positive impact on the customer's life.
For example:
- This car has 400 horsepower (feature)
- This car rips through streets quickly, making you look super cool (benefit)
By informing your prospects of your product/service's benefits as opposed to its features, you can help them imagine what it would be like to have that product in their life.
When done correctly, it's much easier to convert a high-quality lead after already being equipped with convincing information.
3. Validate Leads
Lead validation is a way to help separate low-quality leads from good ones that you get from your advertising campaigns.
Fake leads can include things like fake emails, spam form submissions, etc.
Although you can't stop people from using fake information, you can utilize tools that can help prevent them from happening too often.
There are data verification tools that use geocoding technology that can stop users from inputting fake numbers and addresses.
This can significantly cut down the number of low-quality leads that you hand to your sales team.
4. Segment Your Leads
As you guide your prospects through your sales funnel, try to incorporate interactive elements. This has a twofold purpose:
- It will keep your prospects "awake" by having them choose through different options in the sales-nurturing process
- It will give you more precise information about your leads
By getting more information about your leads, you can segment them into different categories. This can be a valuable tool when it comes to deciding where to lead those segments. The specific process may differ depending on the different lead sources, but the idea remains the same.
For example, let's say you run an event planning business. You already got their name and email addresses from a landing page, which activated an email sequence. This email sequence acts as a sales nurturing funnel for your prospects.
As you lead them through the emails and provide them with info about your product, you can include an email with a question and two clickable links like the following:
What's your main reason for joining this email list?
- I'm interested in event hosting for large corporate events
- I'm interested in event hosting for smaller private groups
- I want to learn more about event hosting
Just by having them select one of these options, you can get a clear idea of what this customer is looking for and likewise put them into different segments.
For segment one, you can start sending them more specific information geared towards hosting large corporate events and so on.
If you automate campaign optimizations like this, you can create specific buckets for your leads and concentrate on the ones that have a chance of becoming customers.
5. Make Form Fields Required
When you create landing pages to attract more leads, the initial thought might be to make it as easy as possible for a prospect to enter their info and click ahead. With this mindset, you might just ask for an email.
However, by adding extra "required" fields, you not only get valuable data about the prospect, but you also weed out low-quality leads that aren't willing to take the time to fill in the necessary info.
You can ask for things like their full name and occupation.
However, there's a balance when it comes to this. Ask for too much information, and you risk pushing potential leads away with forms that take too long to fill in.
6. Ask For Their Work Email
Getting a prospect's work email is much more beneficial for your business than getting their personal email address — especially if your business is in the B2B industry.
Their business email should include a company name, which allows you to research and create a strategy that's right for them. You're also more likely to get a response, seeing as how people spend more time at work during the day than not.
7. Get Rid of Time-Wasting Leads
It's beneficial to regularly go through your list of leads and do a little spring cleaning. Although it may feel more impressive to have a bigger list of leads, it's a waste of time trying to market to people who will never be interested in your product or service.
You might even have undercover competitors that are signing up for your emails to only get more information on your marketing and sales funnel.
To do this, just go to your email platform or CRM and manually remove them.
8. Use Lead Scoring
Once your business has tons of leads, a great way to improve upon them is through lead scoring. Lead scoring is a way to rank your leads based on certain factors. A good lead scoring system will break your leads into groups:
- Cold leads
- Warm leads
- Hot leads
- Information Qualified Leads (IQL)
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
You can customize the criteria based on what you want your leads to have. If you do this, your sales team's conversion rates should increase after spending less time on leads that go nowhere.
Start Getting More Qualified Leads For Your Business!
If there's one thing you should take away from this article, it's that not all leads are created equal. You could be wasting precious time, money, and resources trying to chase higher quantities of leads rather than high-quality leads.
If you're ready to start identifying, winning and keeping the best customers for your business, learn more about how we find consumers that are ready to buy your products.