Do you find that your sales team wastes too much time hounding leads that go nowhere?
Maybe your entire database is plagued with bad intel, and it’s throwing off your personalization strategy.
The truth is, you’re only as strong as the worst part of your database.
Sixty-two percent of businesses use data that is up to 40% incorrect to guide their marketing and sales decisions.
Not only does this send your sales team on wild-goose chases, but it also costs you big time in terms of failed marketing strategies.
It might seem like collecting as many leads as possible makes the most sense, but it’s not a sustainable strategy.
You need quality leads to learn about your audience. A bunch of average or poor leads teaches you nothing.
Instead, improve your inbound marketing personalization and enjoy better quality leads.
What’s Wrong with Your Lead Quality and Why Improve Inbound Marketing?
Only about a quarter of all leads sent to sales end up qualified.
You could argue that marketing needs to do a better job scoring leads, sure. However, improving the quality of every lead you collect from the beginning is much easier, right?
It addresses the problem at its source.
Here’s what typically happens:
- Someone visits your website to read a blog or report and sees a lead form.
- They make a choice: fill out the lead form just to access the content or hit the back button and look for it somewhere else.
- Some visitors end up filling out the form – often with incorrect information – just to access the content.
- Other visitors, including qualified leads, leave the page because they don’t want to give you their personal information.
Forms are at the root of lead quality issues. When you remove forms, visitors can consume as much content as they please and they won’t feel the need to “unlock” content with fake information.
A study from 2016 reveals the problems behind poor lead data and unfortunately, things haven’t changed much:
- B2B databases have a 40% fail rate
- 33% of errors include duplicate or incorrect information
- 10% include invalid ranges
- 8% are missing fields
- Email address validation problems make up 7% of all errors
These are all very simple and easy issues to fix with technology, but they have a tremendous impact on lead quality.
Why Focus on an Inbound Marketing Strategy for B2B Lead Quality?
Inbound marketing tactics like content marketing deliver three-times more leads than outbound yet costs 62% less.
But what about quality? Personalized content marketing and other inbound tactics ensure that you ONLY collect information and email addresses from qualified leads. Here’s why.
Inbound Marketing Lets Leads Nurture at Their Own Pace
Removing forms from your site lifts the blockade on your content.
Visitors won’t feel pressured to fill out a form if you give them samples. When a prospect feels they’re ready to learn more or keep in touch, they’ll give you their email address eventually.
Research shows that B2B buyers complete up to 90% of the sales process on their own without ever contacting a sales team. That process is convoluted.
In fact, only 17% of the journey is spent meeting with potential sales teams – all the sales teams.
When leads can self-nurture, they’ll be further along in the process and more educated about your brand by the time they convert – making the process seamless for your sales team.
You’ll Build Trust in Leads
When prospects and visitors have more time to research your brand through inbound marketing, you have more time to establish trust.
Do you trust a brand – or person for that matter – within the first five minutes of meeting them? Of course not, and it’s even harder for someone to show they’re trustworthy over the internet – isn’t it?
Your B2B buyers are the same way. They need consistent and valuable content to learn about your company, reputation, values, and the products/services you offer.
It Costs Less Than Outbound Marketing
As mentioned above, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound tactics. This figure typically applies to things like PPC vs. blogs.
However, think about all the money your organization could save in time if your sales team only received qualified leads from marketing. Personalized inbound marketing works because you’ll never waste time on dead ends.
How to Improve Inbound Marketing with Personalization
To do its job, inbound marketing must be 100% personalized for every visitor. Fortunately, technology provides all the tools you need to engage your audience with content. By implementing AI personalization, you can increase lead quality by 59% instantly.
How to Improve Inbound Marketing: Study Your Audience to Develop Quality Content
You can’t create personalized content if you don’t research your audience – and consistently.
Buyer needs change and, as per the chart above, the buying process isn’t linear. Don’t be afraid to segment your audience by company or firmographic as you create content as well. Technology makes it easy to target specific job roles or companies as part of an account-based marketing strategy.
Use Artificial Intelligence to Create a Personalized Website Experience
Adding an AI engine to your website lets you organize and distribute your content in a 100% personalized and interactive format.
Fifty-eight percent of buyers say they’re more likely to binge content for up to 20 minutes if it’s presented in an interactive format. Furthermore, 68% say they have less time to research than they’d like.
It’s every B2B marketer’s responsibility to organize content by pain point, issue, or vertical and employ AI/machine learning to make it easy.
How to Improve Inbound Marketing: Replace Forms with Self-Nurturing Landing Pages
Self-nurturing landing pages use AI and machine learning to provide your visitors with endless content recommendations – just like Spotify. Prospects can binge samples of your content until they feel 100% ready to give you their email address.
The self-nurturing landing page also selects relevant pieces of content to guide each lead down the sales funnel, based on what previous visitors like them consumed.
How to Improve Inbound Marketing: Add a Personalization Engine to Your Site Now
A personalization engine creates a unique experience for every website visitor. Your leads receive an experience like Amazon or Netflix but with your B2B content.
Put your amazing content to work. Learn how AI can skyrocket your lead quality with our original research.
