The Importance of Lead Validation

The_Importance_of_Lead_Validation___Social_Selling_Masters_Course

If you ask a company what they struggle with most when it comes to lead generation, more than likely the number one answer would be receiving quality leads. For a company that puts a lot of weight on the quantity of conversions their website receives to determine the success of their campaign, the line between a general conversion and quality lead will easily blur. The best way to combat this issue is to set up a system to measure just how effective your lead generation has been. That ideal system would involve separating sales conversions from non-sales conversions; which in Internet marketing is called lead validation.

 

According to “The Critical Importance of Lead Validation” study, 50 percent of a company’s website conversions aren’t sales leads. Those non-sales leads can range from sales solicitation, to customer service communication or forms with missing information.  So, if you’re considering only the amount of conversions received, you could be overstating your results by a much as half. Another downside to relying on conversion data is that you could be investing in campaigns that are contributing little or no ROI. When you validate your conversions you can accurately determine which campaign elements are generating actual sales leads.

 

Lead validation is also great for marketing and sales alignment. By having the marketing team validate leads, the sales team will be able to invest most of their time moving prospects further down the funnel. When they are given leads wholesale they spend a lot of valuable time sifting through what could be a lot of sales duds.  Lead validation will get the best leads in their hands and aid them in improving close rates and follow up response rates. On the marketing end of spectrum, they will know the marketing channel for every sales lead. This will give marketers the opportunity to optimize lead generation efforts (SEO, PPC, email, etc.) to their highest potential.

 

Key points of lead validation study:

  • The cost per conversion calculation can be and almost always is misleading.
  • Misleading conversion data overstates campaign ROI and leads companies to spend money on the wrong marketing initiatives.
  • Lead validation facilitates faster and more effective campaign testing and improvement.

 

Find out the visit attribution for online lead generation and other importance lead validation insights in the presentation below:

 

Aaron Wittersheim

Aaron Wittersheim is Chief Operating Officer at Straight North, an Internet marketing firm that specializes in SEO and PPC.