There is a prevailing mindset in the retail industry that more leads equal more sales. By this logic, quantity is the top priority in generating sales leads. Unfortunately, this is faulty logic. The truth is you are more likely to sell more products with 25 high quality leads than you will with 250 general leads. The keys to targeting high quality leads are understanding your buyer and using multi-channel marketing strategies effectively. Here, we will look at specific ways to ensure your targeted marketing efforts reach the highest quality leads.

 

Where High Quality Leads Come From

A survey of 300 B2C and B2B companies, conducted by GetApp, found that the majority of respondents considered generating high quality leads to be their biggest challenge. Based on this information, they conducted further study to find out which lead generation methods produce the highest quality leads. Here is a breakdown of those findings:

  • 46.8% come from in-person interactions
  • 22.2% come from social media
  • 12.3% come from content marketing
  • 5.5% come from telemarketing
  • 4.4% from PPC advertising
  • 3.8% from third party review websites
  • 1.0% from other sources

 

In the age of internet and technology, in-person interactions are in a decline, so generating high quality leads means maintaining a strong online presence. The best leads will come from targeted social media advertising and content marketing.

 

Social Media

The most used social media platform for business to consumer marketing is Facebook. The problem is that businesses don’t always use Facebook advertising opportunities to their best advantage. To generate high quality leads, you should be customizing your audience with Facebook Custom Audience. This technology lets you set specific parameters for who sees your message so you can choose to target an audience in common with established customers.

Facebook targeted ads let you target by age, job title, industry, gender, and many other defining qualities. Use it to build a highly targeted email list. How do you get customers to give you their email information? With lead magnets: give something away that “would have high value for your target customer.” You might run a contest where potential leads could win a dinner and a soak in your mood room, for example. The key is to make it not only free, but also of value to the lead. How do you do that? By making sure your ads address the specific needs of your target audience:

  1. What do they really want?
  2. Are they interested in information?
  3. Do they have a problem that needs to be solved?
  4. Is there a question or concern that needs to be addressed?

 

Lead magnets provide a host of benefits such as:

  • Putting prospects in a buying mentality
  • Positioning you as the best source from which to buy
  • Getting you contact information for follow-up marketing
  • Positioning you as an authority on your products
  • Increasing response rates from ads and website visitors
  • Providing you the opportunity to build trust and credibility with prospects

 

Effective lead magnets should be relevant to your target audience, provide a solution to a real problem or issue, and be specific. You could offer seminar notes on the health benefits of spas, resource guides on spa energy efficiency, or access to YouTube informational videos.

Effective lead magnets should be relevant to your target audience, provide a solution to a real problem or issue, and be specific.

 

Forbes says “your ad needs to clearly call out that need, and then effectively explain how and why you have the solution.” They can get that solution by giving you their email address, and voila! You have a high quality lead to follow up on.

 

Content Marketing

Content marketing generates leads by providing relevant, valuable, and consistent content to prospective buyers in an effort to capture highly qualified leads. The types of content that generate the highest quality leads, according to MarketingProfs, breaks down as follows:

  • Research reports: 46%
  • Video/motion graphics: 44%
  • Social media content: 42%                 
  • Webinars/webcasts: 40%
  • Case studies/whitepapers: 30%
  • Infographics: 17%

 

“Demandmetric estimates that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing techniques, while it generates at least 3 times as many leads.”  The most effective methods of generating high quality leads through content marketing are these three:

1. Interactive Content: Features such as calculators and quizzes designed to help people find out what spa is right for them and to calculate affordability are popular forms of interactive content. They satisfy the consumer need for instant gratification and give them personalized results. Quizzes can also be designed to capture additional information that can be used in lead segmentation to better help you identify truly qualified leads.

2. Gated Visual Content: Provide access to a variety of information available in the form of blogs, videos, white papers, and presentations. “According to Jake Wengroff, the former Global Director of Social Media Strategy and Research for Frost & Sullivan, SlideShare generated thousands of qualified leads every year for his company and thus increased the ROI by at least 50 times.” Make the information available for free in exchange for the prospect’s email address.

3. Direct Engagement: Use webinars and contests to directly interact with prospects.  Offer prizes for completing surveys or participating in picture contests on Facebook or Instagram. Make sure prizes, topics, and questions are targeted toward a specific audience to ensure you obtain qualified leads. Even webinars on spa maintenance, spa benefits, and so forth can be good lead generators. Only prospects truly interested in making a purchase will take the time to participate in webinars, which, according to Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, is “the second most successful content strategy.”

Remember that effective lead-generating content should be responsive, unintrusive, and focused on your specific audience.

 

Remember that effective lead-generating content should be responsive, unintrusive, and focused on your specific audience.

 

Filtering Leads For Quality

Even with a strong presence on social media and focused content marketing, you will still need to have effective filtering to weed out the “weak” leads. Here are a few tips from Audience Bloom on eliminating the “weakest links.”

  • Content: “If you need qualified leads with more experience or familiarity, you’ll have to increase the vocabulary and change the focus of your articles.”
  • Social Media: Target specific demographics and “use segmented lists to filter out those who might not be relevant—such as people outside your demographic area.”
  • Landing Page Segmentation: Use multiple landing pages, each of which should appeal to a specific demographic. “If you funnel lots of traffic to each of these pages, they’ll naturally filter out any leads who aren’t qualified for each specific service.”
  • Conversion Process Difficulty: “By making your conversion process more difficult, such as asking more questions or requiring a specific commitment to proceed, you’ll filter out the marginally interested parties and focus solely on those who are already willing to buy.”

 

Of course, every bad lead you filter out means less wasted time for your sales team and increased sales to traffic percentage. Keep fine tuning the process until you have a “well-oiled lead-generating machine.”

 

Final Advice

Another powerful tool is retargeting technology. It tracks online interactions with your brand, like on your website, then lets you customize ad messages to their specific interests. When ad messages speak to potential customers personal needs, those prospects become more interested in your product and thus become a higher quality lead.

When it comes to tracking those leads, experts at Forbes insist that Google Analytics is essential for data tracking “which web pages and strategies work best for generating leads.” Furthermore, GetApp research shows that 78% of survey respondents say that Customer Relationship Management (CRM)/Sales management software has increased their ability to generate higher quality leads.

Are you using your targeted marketing strategies to the fullest extent possible? If not, you may be sacrificing quality for quantity and letting high quality leads slip away.