Leads are the lifeline of any business. Conversions are what B2B businesses survive on. You can generate as many leads as possible, but if they do not convert to customers, then all your efforts are wasted. And that is why having efficient lead management in place is crucial.
Lead management is all about providing your customers with impressive content at every stage of their purchase lifecycle. And that is what we are going to discuss today.
Why lead management is crucial for conversion
Spending on lead management is very important for a business to sustain itself. It is unfair to expect your sales and marketing teams to convert all leads into customers with minimal effort. For best results, avoid an arbitrary approach. Instead, devise proper marketing strategies and an implementation plan.
Once you have captured leads, it is time to nurture them and maximize efforts for conversion.
Lead management measures to improve conversions
1. Target ideal audience
The very first phase is to identify your target audience. Use your marketing strategies to reach people who have little to no chance of becoming leads is a waste of money. Also, if you have not understood who your target audience is and why they need what they need, then your lead management strategy will be imperfect. Rather, identify your ideal customer base and design an approach that specifically caters to them. This significantly increases the chances of warmer leads.
2. Segment leads
Once the target audience becomes the lead, the next step is to identify high-priority leads in terms of sales readiness. High-quality accounts can also mean better returns in terms of revenue and brand perception.
Now, it is usually seen that the definition of “same” varies for sales and marketing departments. Not finalizing criteria well ahead of time can lead to discrepancies later. Let your sales and marketing teams decide on segmentation criteria and how to proceed with each section.
Also, look at leads’ potential value. In the long run, quality trumps quantity. Having selected leads with high chances of conversion is way better than a large number of leads with varying chances of conversion.
3. Nurture leads to conversion
Getting a prospect on board depends on building strong and lasting relationships. Simply pitching them your product or services is not enough. Curate a strategy so that you build a long-standing bond with the lead. This does not mean that you have to unnecessarily lengthen the process of lead nurturing. Take it step by step and progress steadily.
You can align their purchase life cycle with their interests by offering them customized content. This way, you can offer the right content at the right stage; in a way that gently nudges them towards conversion.
4. Optimize leads
The transfer of leads from marketing to sales is a crucial step in lead management. If they are passed early or too late, your business is always at risk of losing a prospective client. The best approach is to bring together your sales and marketing teams to join forces and design a strategy to reap the most benefits from the leads.
The joint task force can craft a service-level agreement (SLA), which will define the lead routing process along with the follow-up procedure and timeframe. The SLA will give freedom to the sales team to send leads back to the marketing team when needed.
5. Review and enhance strategy
In the final stage, keep reviewing the ideal consumer base and their needs and pain points. The market is dynamic, and so is the audience. Hence, you will need to keep updating your marketing strategy to align with changing market trends and the needs of prospects. Look for different ways to make changes that will improve the conversion rate.
You can conduct frequent surveys or send out questionnaires to gauge the changing mood of your audience. Analyze the results thoroughly before making a change in your lead management strategy.
Without leads, most companies will have minimal sales and little growth. For maximum conversion, you must have an efficient lead management strategy in place. Such a strategy will help you determine a prospect’s position in its sales lifecycle. You can then curate relevant content for leads as per their position.
