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Why Sales Lead Quality Fails Expectations

Virtually all B2B and life science clients are worried about sales lead quality. And if they aren’t, their sales teams are continuously reminding them. That’s why our ears perked up when we heard about a new study conducted by Ascend2 on lead quality.1 The survey offered insights into this burning marketing issue.

Here are the facts:

  • Improving personalization of their marketing efforts (60%) and creating better content (57%) were the two most-cited strategies to enhance lead quality. More than half the respondents also cited these two objectives as the most difficult to achieve.
  • The vast majority (87%) of the marketing leaders said their budgets for lead quality programs will grow in the coming year.
  • Social media (59%) and email marketing (40%) continue to be the most effective channels for improving lead quality.
  • The most common metrics used for lead quality measurement were sales revenue generated (56%) and the customer conversion rate (48%).

TW’s Take:

Boosting lead quality has emerged as a critical issue with the deluge of content marketing programs swamping B2B prospects’ email boxes. We believe there are four key factors that will improve lead effectiveness:

  1. Media micro-targeting: Finding channels that can target niche audiences with common interests and needs
  2. Content quality: Developing high-value content (papers, briefs, webinars, videos, etc.) that solves a prospect’s problem or exhibits thought leadership
  3. Content personalization: Tailoring the content to a specific industry, application area, position title, or stage in the buying journey
  4. Web landing page effectiveness: Creating content landing pages with brief descriptions, registration forms, and calls to action that entice visitors to convert

Lead quality improvement requires an effective strategy, good ear for the voice of the customer, plus a willingness to produce high-value content that addresses the target persona’s issues.

 

For a copy of the Ascend2 study, contact rwhitmyre@tizinc.com.

In our next blog post in early January, we’ll begin a series on the Content Efficiency Gap: Six Steps to Improving Your Content Marketing.

1 Strategies, Tactics, and Trends for Lead Generation Quality, Ascend2, August 2019.

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