You have built what you believe is a great website and mapped out your best lead generation strategy. Your landing pages are top of the line and your calls-to-action are concise and engaging. Now all you have to do is sit back and watch as those sales leads roll in. If that were the case, all of our jobs would be a lot easier. In reality, once those tasks are done the real work has just begun.
The best way to know how effective your online marketing efforts have been is to properly manage the leads you’ve generated. A great way to do this is through a process called lead validation, which involves separating sales leads from other non-sales inquiries. While we can only hope that the many inquiries that we generate are sales related, according to “The Critical Importance of Lead Validation” study by Straight North, a Charlotte SEO company, 50 percent of a company’s website inquiries are not sales leads. Those non-sales conversions consist of things such as:
- Spam form submissions
- Customer service inquiries
- Empty forms or forms that are missing contact information
- Phone misdials
- Sales solicitations
The study also reveals the days most leads convert and the marketing source for each conversion. More insight is available in the presentation below:
The Importance of Lead Validation by Straight North.
So, what does this all mean? If you’ve built a lead generation campaign and measure its success based on inquiries, your results can be vastly overstated. The result—you invest in campaigns that are not generating the sales leads you’re seeking.
When you validate leads, you will be relying on accurate and meaningful data that gives you a clear picture of your campaign’s ROI.
