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Why your inbound leads suck
Why accurate sales data is essential for improving the quality of inbound leads
The Path to Better Leads
As a marketer, it’s crucial to generate high-quality inbound leads to achieve your business goals. However, without accurate and up-to-date sales data, your efforts may be wasted on low-quality leads that are unlikely to convert into paying customers.
In this article, we’ll explore how inaccurate sales data is being a major factor into why your inbound leads suck and provide strategies to improve their quality.
Inaccurate or incomplete data, poor lead qualification, lack of personalization, and missed opportunities are the most common reasons why your inbound leads suck. But to find out if your leads suck ask yourself the following:
- Are you missing out on valuable information about your target audience?
- Is your sales team investing time on leads that are not a good fit for your product or service?
- Are you struggling to personalize your marketing efforts to meet the specific needs of your target audience?
- Are you missing out on valuable opportunities to connect with your target audience?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, read on as I address each of these concerns:
“Are you missing out on valuable information about your target audience?”
It’s a common mistake to assume that you know everything about your target audience without actively seeking their input. Inbound leads may seem like a good source of information, but if you’re collecting the data and not analyzing it, you could be missing out on valuable insights that could improve your overall marketing strategy. This seems like an obvious statement so why don’t most marketing and sales teams do this? I think it’s because it’s hard.
When you take the time to actively engage with your audience and collect feedback on their pain points, preferences, and needs you gain insight as to how your offering can solve their problems on a consistent basis. This means that you need to listen to phone calls, review chat, meeting and phone transcripts, and extract the salient and relevant information.
“Is your sales team wasting time on leads that are not a good fit for your product or service?”
One of the biggest complaints from sales frontline is that they’re spending too much time on leads that never convert into qualified opportunities (this is generally caused by “older school” sales and executive leadership). These meetings not only waste time, but it also creates frustration and burnout for your sales team. To avoid this, make sure that your inbound lead qualification process is clear and well-defined. Use data and analytics to identify the characteristics of your ideal customer, and set up automated lead scoring to prioritize the most promising leads for your sales team and when those individuals show a higher level of intent or interest you can then have your sales colleagues engage them in further discussions .
“Are you struggling to personalize your marketing efforts to meet the specific needs of your target audience?”
As your prospects have likely spent a significant amount of time researching solutions to their problem, personalization is key to a successful marketing strategy, but it can be challenging to achieve without the right data and tools. Your inbound leads may provide some basic information that helps you scratch the surface about your audience, but it’s not enough to create truly personalized content and messaging.
To improve your personalization efforts, ask for incremental data from your prospects in order for them to receive additional value from your marketing content. Then take all this incremental date andconsider implementing a customer data platform (CDP) or customer relationship management (CRM) system to collect and analyze data across all touchpoints, and use that information to create more targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.
“Are you missing out on valuable opportunities to connect with your target audience?”
Inbound leads are a great way to connect with potential customers, but if you’re not actively engaging with them, you could be missing out on valuable opportunities to gather insight, build relationships and drive sales. Make sure that your inbound lead management process includes regular communication and follow-up with leads, whether that’s through email marketing, social media, or other channels (like focus groups or good old fashioned phone calls). By staying top of mind and providing value to your leads, you’ll increase the chances of converting them into loyal customers. Here’s a great summary graphic of the impact of bad lead data on your revenue operations.
How to improve the quality of your inbound leads
To improve the quality of your inbound leads, you can consider investing in a CRM, using lead scoring, personalizing your messaging, and working closely with your sales team.
Investing in a CRM
One of the most effective ways to enhance the quality of inbound leads is by investing in a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM allows you to consolidate and organize valuable customer data, track interactions, and analyze buying patterns. By leveraging this information, you can gain valuable insights into your prospects’ preferences and behaviors. This data-driven approach enables you to tailor your marketing strategies, resulting in targeted campaigns that resonate with potential customers (because your messaging speaks to the pain points, problems and jobs to be done), ultimately generating higher quality inbound leads.
Using lead scoring
Implementing a lead scoring system is a powerful tool to sift through inbound leads and prioritize those with the highest potential for conversion. By assigning a numerical value to various prospect attributes, activities and engagement levels, you can identify the most likely qualified leads. This process ensures that your sales team focuses their efforts on leads that are more likely to convert into revenues, thus saving time and resources. Lead scoring enhances the efficiency of your lead generation efforts and boosts the quality of your inbound leads, increasing the overall success rate of your sales funnel.
Most CRMs or Marketing Automation solutions will allow you to build scoring automation workflows for each of the individuals that have become leads. But beware, you or your revenue operations team might be tempted to create the “perfect” scoring automation that involves 12 steps using a “Nobel prize winning” behavioral scoring analysis that will mean nothing to advance your lead quality. Instead, start small, then add behaviours or assets that make sense.
Personalizing messaging
Crafting personalized messages is instrumental in engaging potential customers and establishing meaningful connections. By segmenting your leads based on their interests, demographics, and past interactions, you can tailor your content to resonate with each audience segment. Personalization not only captures the attention of prospects but also communicates that you understand their specific needs and challenges. As a result, you can nurture relationships and build market credbility effectively and improve the quality of inbound leads by delivering more relevant and compelling content that encourages them to move further along the sales journey.
Closing the Loop: working closely with the sales team
The collaboration between lead generation and sales teams is essential for maximizing the quality of inbound leads. Regular communication and alignment between the two teams allow for a better understanding of the types of leads that are most likely to convert into revenue opportunities. Sales representatives can provide valuable feedback on the leads they are engaging with, helping refine lead scoring criteria and optimize lead generation strategies. This shared knowledge fosters a more efficient lead qualification process and ensures that marketing efforts are directed towards attracting leads that are a good fit for the company’s products or services, resulting in a higher quality of inbound leads and increased sales success.
In conclusion, accurate and up-to-date sales data is essential for generating high-quality inbound leads. Take steps today to improve your sales data by investing in a CRM, using lead scoring, personalizing your messaging, and working closely with your sales team. Don’t let your inbound leads suck – improve their quality and achieve your business goals more effectively.
