Generally, it is difficult to spot a quality lead, or which lead is ready to buy and who isn’t. Different actions and interactions with your brand can have different implications on whether a lead is interested in your product offering.
So how do you know if it’s worth pursuing that new lead or if they will just drop off? Check out these five critical signs of a quality lead.
1 – Provided sensitive information
Your contact information or sign-up forms can collect email addresses and other ‘sensitive’, personal information that helps signal high interest from the leads.
One of the ways you can tell is by making some questions on your sign-up forms optional, and make them obvious! The people who are genuinely interested in your products or services would often tell you a bit more about themselves, such as their mobile number, company, title, or time frame they’re likely to make a purchase. Those who are not so interested or had to sign up just to view free content will probably not take the time to answer these questions. You can still focus on these leads, but not as much as the others.
2 – How they make the first contact
Did the customer fill out an email sign-up form or did they fill out an information request form at an event? These are the types of leads you want to follow up before anyone else. At this stage, the prospects have certainly shown interest in your company and are aware of what you can do for them. Your important task now is to show them why they need to choose you over competitors.
Within a day or two, reach out to this prospect to provide them with more information. At this state, it would be good if you have already put into place some ‘tracking’ system to see if the lead has visited or returned to your website and looked at certain pages. Knowing this will allows you to craft more effective messages to convert them! You can either invite this person to call you personally or arrange an appointment for more information about a product or service that this person showed interest in.
3 – The time when the contact was made
When a person contacts you in any form, the time of the year might give you an idea about what they need and why.
For many marketers, the weakest leads often come at the beginning of the year. People make resolutions, but they do not always keep them. They express interest in many different products and services with no real intention of actually following through. These leads might not always be worth investing a lot of time with, but it doesn’t mean you can’t engage with them.
Only you can tell the time of year that you’ll often get the best leads! Use this knowledge to find out what type of marketing and attention you should spend on a lead who showed little purchase intent. They could turn into a sale later in the year so it is a good idea to set up automated drip email campaigns to slowly convert those leads. If they really aren’t interested, they will probably opt out of your emails, and then you won’t have to worry about them at all.
4 – Demographic characteristics
When creating a lead generation magnet as a sign-up form, there should be just one or two questions that will help you narrow down and define the lead’s demographic. Once you have the demographic, you can better assess why this person wanted to sign up and how you could better lead them to the sales funnel.
One big question you need to ask yourself: what are my targeted demographic? Maybe you’re targeting specific industries, such as construction, education, tourism, or someone with a managerial title or other decision maker titles. Not everyone needs or wants your product or service, so do not follow leads from people outside of your target demographic (or at least don’t focus too much on them).
Only after you have defined your target audience, you can create one or two questions to help determine if they are a good match. If you are an education provider, you might present a question such as “I plan on enrolling in a——course within the next six months.” Have a drop-down menu where users can select an answer. Now you can create ads to fit those needs and not focus on people who may not need your services soon. Or you can create drip email campaigns to gradually convert those leads based on the answers they’ve provided.
5 – Digital body language
From website visits to emails opened, the specific links clicked, understanding your leads’ digital body language can signal their intention to buy. Visits to important pages such as Contact Us, FAQs or a pricing page are signs of hot leads, and what else are you waiting for but notifying your sales team to follow up with them?
Using the lead’s email address, try to find them on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social site. Did they like your Facebook page or interact with your accounts on other social media sites? If so, these leads are probably (or should we say definitely) worth putting more effort in.
It is really difficult to manage a huge amount of leads without having a specific measuring in place. Thankfully, there is marketing automation software that allows you to track and measure your leads’ interaction over time. If you’d like to find out more, contact us to schedule a demo with our SharpSpring automation platform, and we will show you the magic of our automation capabilities.