If you’re a digital marketer, a top priority is likely converting and sending those high quality website leads to your sales team. You don’t want to send any old lead to your sales team though.
A well-qualified lead is going to have a higher chance of eventually becoming a customer. But, how do you get those types of leads? According to a B2B Marketing Lead Generation Survey by IDG Enterprises, 61% of B2B marketers say generating high-quality leads is a top challenge. Ironically enough, it all starts offline. To send high-quality leads to your sales team, you’ll want to collaborate with sales to determine attributes of a high-quality lead.
What is a high-quality lead?
Everyone’s definition of a high-quality lead is different. The perfect customer for one company won’t be perfect for another company. This depends on your products, services, solutions and your success rate with different types of customers.
First, to attract your ideal customer to your website and ultimately start a conversation with sales, you need to know who that is. Otherwise you’re spinning your wheels trying to drive potentially unqualified traffic to your site.
Sales and marketing alignment
Your sales team can help define your ideal lead because they know the attributes of a “perfect fit.” They also know the attributes of a bad fit, which can be helpful in your lead generation efforts too. Ask them the criteria so you know where to cast your net. Criteria might include:
Company industry
If you sell your product or services to a specific industry, that’s important to note. For example, we work with B2B companies in these industries: Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, Manufacturing, Professional Services and Construction. Focusing on attracting visitors who work in other industries would be a waste of time because from experience you probably know they have a lower likelihood of becoming a client.
Alternatively, by focusing on industries we do specialize in we’re putting our energy in the places it makes the most sense.
Position/title
Think about who you primarily work with at a company and what their titles are. For us, it depends on the type of company, but it’s primarily the marketing director/manager and the website manager. Other people are included in the conversation too like sales managers, IT/tech managers, and executives (CEO, COO, CFO).
Depending on your product or solution – who is the company contact that benefits most from it?
Pain points & challenges
Now that you have the industry you need to focus on and the positions at those companies, let’s dig deeper. Your product or service is solving a problem. What problems are potential customers having? What challenges and pain points are shared with your sales team? Ultimately, what triggered their search for a company like yours with a product/service like yours?
For us, the main challenges for prospective clients include:
• Outdated website, falling behind competitors
• Unintuitive experience for website visitors
• Difficulty managing their website
• Don’t have resources internally to manage website
• Need an experienced partner for SEO, PPC, social media
Ask your sales team what pain points and challenges they hear most often. A solid grasp here can position you as a company who recognizes the obstacles your customers face. By addressing those obstacles, it opens a dialogue on how you can help.
First things first
Developing your ideal customer profiles creates a solid foundation before jumping in. Remember, without identifying who your ideal customer is you’re fishing in the dark.
A great first step is to think about and list the terms your ideal customer is searching for. When they want to solve their pain points and challenges, what do they type into Google?
For example, a researcher looking for a biotech company who’s developing treatments for rare diseases might be searching for “new therapies for rare diseases” or “recent research on rare diseases treatment.”
Optimizing your website for keywords and key phrases that are relevant to your company and your ideal customer can get the right eyes on your website. Include these target terms in online advertising campaigns and social media marketing to further maximize your efforts.
Knowledge is power
The more you know about your customers, the better off you’ll be. Now, you can tailor your messaging, content and tactics around what matters most to them. Sales and marketing alignment is a critical first step to gain a deep knowledge of the type of website leads you want. Start offline to gain consensus around your ideal customer so you’re not wasting time driving any ‘ole lead to your website.
Only then will you be prepared to drive high-quality traffic that has the best chance of converting.
We’ll be covering how you can convert leads once they’ve landed on your website in a future post so be sure to check back.
Until then – if you need help with this foundation, reach out to get started.
Read about the battle between marketing vs. sales when it comes to leads.
