Lead Generation: Why Quality Trumps Quantity

Lead generation is becoming more competitive in every industry. If you are a B2B professional, you have been feeling the pain of bringing more prospective business into the fold. Not just more in terms of the amount, but quality leads that can make decisions. Many leads won’t convert because the lead you’ve generated is a person who isn’t qualified to decide on behalf of the company. When choosing between quality and quantity, quality wins every time. The main reasons? Time savings and increase in ROI. When talking to leads that aren’t high quality, too much time is spent speaking to people that won’t be able to move forward with your product or service. Even if they think it is a good idea, they are unlikely to have the influence necessary to get the sale done. You may also find you are calling people that aren’t at the end of the buyer’s journey. In perfect world, you would attain both quality and quantity. This world does, in fact, exist. Here are some things you can do to increase your efforts and bring more inbound leads to your process. 1) Cold Outreach If you think cold outreach is a thing of the past, this is not the case. While cold outreach might not convert as high as some other forms of marketing, it is still something you can do to increase the number of leads that come into your process. Whether you are emailing, sending postcards, cold calling or using some other form of outreach, you can get some leads into your process through cold outreach. 2) Articles & Blogs Articles and blogs are a powerful way to get in front of your audience and build your authority. Each piece of your content should be tailored to a specific part of the buyer’s journey. If someone is in the comparison part of their buyer’s journey, you don’t want to meet them with a post that is crafted for the awareness part of the journey. If you work with a professional inbound marketing agency, you won’t have to strategize all of your content. Instead of having to strategize all of your own content, you can work on what you’re truly good at and provide service and products your customers need. Make sure you promote your articles and blogs when you post them. While having great blog posts is important, you need to make sure people actually see your content. If you have great content, but you aren’t able to get anyone to view it, the content isn’t going to do your company any good. 3) Videos, Podcasts & Webinars Videos, podcasts, and webinars are the next levels of progression in your content marketing strategy to generate more high-quality leads. This longer form content is used to continue to build trust and show authority on the topic. It is possible to use video in your cold outreach process to build trust as well. If you do decide you want to use video in your cold outreach process, make sure the videos are brief and catch, so people pay attention. If you make videos over 90 seconds, you are likely to lose most of your audience before that point in the video. 4) Social Media Social media is a great place to target high-quality leads. You should pay attention to where your audience spends its time. Not all social media platforms are relevant to your company. If you are in the B2B space, LinkedIn is likely to be a good source for leads. Posting quality content on LinkedIn consistently can begin to build trust and help other people in your industry see you as an authority. Being consistent on one platform is better than being inconsistent on multiple platforms, but if you can add platforms and still maintain your consistency, you can get even more reach. 5) Retargeting & Live Chat Put pop-ups and lead capture forms strategically throughout the website. You want to capture as many people as possible, and these forms will get many interested people to stay on your list so you can nurture them. Some people can’t be bothered with filling out a long form, so another important part of your website is live chat. Live chat is easier for people to interact with and more fun. You will be able to connect with potential buyers instantly which means you have another opportunity to get them to interact with your brand. Every interaction with your brand will allow you to gather more information about your target audience and weed out the people that are not your ideal candidate. Conclusion Lead generation is truly getting more difficult, but it will be easier if you position yourself as an authority in the industry. When done effectively, you will bring in more leads than people that don’t focus on inbound marketing. When your company starts mapping content to each stage of your funnel, you are able to bring-in a more valuable qualified marketing leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers. Get started on your improving your lead generation and B2B marketing strategy set your company on the most appropriate path towards generating higher quality leads that are more likely to convert into customers.