What are good quality leads and how to get them using Marketo

Great. Marketing seems to be doing what it’s meant to – growing awareness and bringing in new quality leads – but are they the leads that Sales want? Are they leads genuinely interested in our product or service that can be converted into paying customers?

Our latest webinar Marketo leads: the good, the bad and the high quality talks through everything you need to know when it comes to lead quality in Marketo; you can catch up on demand.

As explained in the webinar, we see three focus areas when it comes to achieving quality leads.

Data optimisation

How accurate and complete is your data set? Do you have all of the data points on a lead before passing it on to Sales?
The first, and arguably the most important part of lead quality is improving the quality and hygiene of your data – essentially filling in the gaps, a somewhat tedious but very vital process.

• Accuracy, and in turn trust from the Sales team, can be improved by removing duplicates – an always-on dedupe tool can be used to facilitate this and ensure the database stays duplicate-free.
• Consider progressive profiling to map out the data points you need to collect from leads at different points in their journey to optimise their experience and encourage more conversions – by keeping questions and form fields to a minimum at any one time.
• Utilise exception reporting to ensure nothing slips through the gaps – populate any missing data points for Sales and provide a more personalised follow-up to the customer.

Process automation

We’re all about making life easier for ourselves and our customers. This can be done by automating the process – maximising the always-on capabilities that Marketo offers. Some examples are:

• Link statuses to automatically disqualify leads and enable them to be re-added into the process, or alternatively automatically push more specified leads through to Sales.
• Utilise engagement campaigns to ensure that communications are consistent and don’t stop once a generated lead is passed over to Sales. It’s marketing’s job to continue engagement and create new opportunities for added support or to receive feedback to improve our products and services.

Tip: To reduce delay and improve customer experience, consider optimising the follow-up process – this could be by introducing a lead routing tool for instant meeting bookings.

Lead volume

Surprisingly enough, more is not always better when it comes to lead generation. A certain level of control needs to be asserted to reduce the volume of leads and focus on processes that bring in fewer higher-quality prospects to pass over to Sales. Essentially the volume of leads needs to be reduced to give the quality the chance to start improving.
Here are a few ideas to start refining lead volume:

• Nurture leads for longer with relevant content to better understand their pain points and profile
• Create relevant scoring thresholds which would signal clear buying signals where customers reach them

Final tips for you to take away and start increasing lead quality

• Keep it simple when it comes to lead follow-up; cut to the chase with plain text emails
• Maximise the win/loss data regularly to keep marketing and conversion strategy optimised
• Utilise revenue models to send tailored communications to leads depending on their stage in the buying cycle – this will help to prompt them to move along to the next stage in the customer journey. Discover more in our webinar: Out with spreadsheets – and in with Marketo Engage Revenue Models

Watch the webinar in full here or reach out to our team of experts to discuss your leads process, engagement campaigns or marketing and sales alignment – we’re here to help.