Envisage entering the office after a relaxing weekend to find the information of several piping hot leads sitting on your desk - Sounds too good to be true? Think again.
Historically sales and marketing teams have relied purely on avenues such as a trade shows to make their mark. Online marketing gave new options, but there are many competing, often laborious forms to capture vital prospect information.
Online Lead Generation, and in particular web-based lead scoring, is a newer approach to these traditional ways, making it possible to obtain viable business opportunities. Potentially it can create a cost-effective platform which requires less marketing spend as every potential lead is captured and even identified by company. We will give a briefing about these techniques in the next free Smart Insights webcast with this post introducing the approach - please register here.
Recent research from Optify reviewing B2B Lead Generation tactics shows the potential of using online lead scoring, although many still aren't using the techniques I will discuss later in this article.
The ultimate goal of most marketing personnel is to maximise their revenue, through analysing visitors and website hits as an indication of a successful website or promotional campaign. Lead scoring takes this one step further, assigning points to each URL (webpage) based on its importance within the company.
Lead Scoring specialises in providing quality leads to businesses through the simple look up of a visitors IP address. In order to ensure data is accurate, the three strikes rule is implemented, where the same IP is identified across the estate three times to ensure the deployment of accurate data.
Specialists in this field such as my organisation, WOW Analytics have gathered such information over 8 years, currently obtaining 1.6m registered business IP addresses around the UK. Through a global partnership with data provider Dun & Bradstreet, WOW can resolve a domain name against their database and find details such as SIC codes, company size as well as head office location thus providing hot, viable leads.
With a wealth of market information currently, customers choices’ are far more informed when looking to buy. People search the internet, using various sources such as Social Media to gain a wider picture of both product and company.
This level of research suggests most customers can be up to 90% through their buying journey before reaching contract with a sales teams. By tracking a client’s journey, you are equipped with the tools to identify a casual browser from a potential lead on the buying cycle, through lead score.
A lead score can be based on volume of hits or more effectively can be based upon pages viewed through a best practice scoring system embedded on each web page. With certain analytics tools you are able to assign a high score for those pages you regard most important to gather a clearer picture of potential leads are viewing habits.
By gathering a fuller picture of everyone’s journey through the website your sales teams are able to target when exactly they feel that a client is ready for attention.
A lead can be assigned to a specific salesperson allowing them to keep track of a visitor’s movements through the website and also set up alerts for when certain pages are reached. This means they can target their sales move at the opportune moment when a client portraying a high level of interest in a purchase rather than contacting a prospect who may be merely browsing or collecting information.
The success of lead generation is seen as a hot industry topic as marketers are starting to increase their lead generation spends greatly. The industry is starting to change and implement new technologies upon identifying an increase of an online presence and a shrink in traditional media.
Online media allows marketers to generate more quantifiable results and gather more information about a client than has ever been possible before.
What is the barrier to entry? The greatest barrier to entry to quality lead generation is lack of resources in staffing, budgeting, or time, and lack of high quality data to drive campaigns. This need not be an issue in current times with analytics software helping to drive leads, meaning less time need be wasted on lengthy phone calls and contacting people who have not shown an interest in buying.
Time can be targeted more effectively at those leads which are likely to come off and a smaller team can generate the revenues and new business that previously required a much larger workforce.
The success of lead generation is based on the skills of the sales and marketing in converting leads in the sales along with strong marketing communication tools.
A report conducted by Optify identified that ‘61% of marketers reported that generating high quality leads was problematic for their organisation’.
With statistics such as this, is it is easy to see why lead generation techniques are becoming increasingly important to businesses.
If you can obtain knowledge on every visitor on your website rather than searching new business and potential leads through cold calling, generating high quality leads suddenly becomes much simpler and more manageable.
But why not get ahead of the rest with this innovative lead generator and become a leader in marketing strategy not a follower.
Thanks to Simon Moss for sharing his opinions and thoughts in this blog post. Simon Moss is a Chartered Marketer with over eight years’ marketing experience gained primarily in the B2B marketplace. He currently looks after the marketing for CommuniGator and WOW Analytics; a leading digital marketing agency providing email marketing solutions and cutting edge technology that enables you to maximise the value of every visit to your website – identifying and naming prospects visiting corporate websites. You can follow him on LinkedIn or connect on Twitter.For more information on lead scoring and to receive a demonstration and trial, visit the WOW Analytics website or call us on 0844 880 2899.WOW Analytics are offering a 30 DAY FREE TRIAL for the readers of Smart Insights and we will also define and score your website based on best practice techniques. Quote SmartInsights when contacting us. WOW are Content Partners with Smart Insights.
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