As you develop your advertisements and marketing messaging, your company will generate a lot of leads for your business. But not all leads are built the same. Before your sales team starts using unnecessary time and resources to contact leads that won’t go anywhere, it’s helpful to understand the difference between general leads vs. high-quality leads and how to generate more of the latter.
General Leads vs. High-Quality Leads
General leads include anyone who shows a general interest in your company or the products and services it has to offer. That might include anyone who filled out a lead-generation form on or engaged with your content or website. Though generating a large number of general leads might seem like a win for your business, it’s possible that some leads might be a better fit for your company than others.
High-quality leads, compared to general leads, are leads that show an interest in your company and are also a better fit for your business and the products and services it offers. The reason these leads are often a better fit for your company can be due to a number of factors. These factors might include being a better fit due to their pain points or needs that you can solve, or because your company has taken the time to nurture a stronger relationship with them.
Why Is It Important To Develop High-Quality Leads?
Developing and pursuing high-quality leads is important because you know it’s not a waste of your sales team’s time or resources. If your sales team spends a lot of its time contacting every lead that your marketing department generates, they may not use their limited time efficiently. Instead, if your marketing and sales teams take the time to generate and distinguish quality leads from general leads, it can help them improve their rate of success and focus their efforts on sales that are more likely to close.
When your company develops high-quality leads, it also helps to build stronger relationships with your target customers. That’s because they often have a better understanding of how your company can help them and their pain points thanks to your targeted marketing and advertising.
3 Ways To Develop High Quality Leads
Here are three ways to create higher quality leads for your business and sales team:
1. Focus On Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the best ways to develop higher quality leads, because it allows you to build relationships with your audience before communicating with them directly. That’s because a lot of potential customers and clients read through a business’s content before contacting a sales representative. In fact, 62% of B2B buyers say they use content to guide their purchasing decisions.
When you develop content marketing with a long-term strategy in mind, you can organically attract people to your website using targeted keywords and convert them into leads using sign-up forms and gated content. Leads who are most interested in the products or services you sell will be more likely to fill out these forms to learn more about the content you offer, as well as the products and services you sell.
2. Create More In-Depth Forms
If you use forms to collect audience information and generate leads, it’s helpful to collect data on them that’s tailored to your industry and the products or services you offer. For example, let’s say your business sells to multiple industries. It’s helpful to have your site visitors pick the industry they operate in and their role or job function while filling out the form. This can help you better understand what they might be looking for from your business before your sales team contacts them.
These more in-depth forms can also sort out the higher-quality leads from the general leads. If someone takes the time to fill out a form and willingly offers a bit more information, it’s likely that they might be more interested in what your company does and might even be open to further discussion of what you can offer them. But it’s important to find a middle ground. If your form is too long, it might deter leads from filling it out altogether, even high-quality ones. So, focus only on need-to-know information.
3. Define Your Target Audience
Defining your target audience can help you learn what type of content they like to consume and where they like to consume it. This can help you better understand how to engage with them and attract them to your business. For example, let’s say you research your audience and learn more about which websites your audience frequents or which keywords they tend to search. Using that information, you can place targeted advertisements to attract them more effectively than by using traditional marketing tactics.
For example, if your business works in industries such as trucking or construction, you can use media brands, like CCJ and Equipment World to host your advertisements and grab the attention of your target audience. Randall Reilly currently provides Media Playbooks for these brands and more that detail how you can take advantage of using proprietary data to target your audience, place strategic ads, shift buyer behavior, and strengthen your marketing efforts.
