2015 Sales Lead Budget: Are You Allocating Wisely?

A recent study from Salesfusion found that fewer than 10 percent of surveyed marketers believe their current lead generation strategies are effective, a startling figure given that businesses pour billions of dollars annually into various methods for acquiring leads and lead intelligence. While offline lead generation is by no means dead, the industry, like nearly everything else in the new millennium, is turning more and more to online development, with email dominating as the most utilized lead generation tool, according to the Salesfusion study.

Online Cheaper, Offline More Effective?

In general, online leads are significantly cheaper than offline ones, though fewer digital sales prospects end up being converted than those met face to face by an in-person representative. This phenomenon, however, can be chalked up to the fact that online conversion is a very new reiteration of the sales funnel, a swath of largely unexplored marketing territory that still requires research and time before all the differences between lead conversion in the offline world and lead conversion in cyberspace are well understood and the process can be perfected.

Lead Age: A Top Metric For Conversion

For example, one important distinction, the discovery of which has resulted in demonstrable industry improvement over the past several years, is time. Lead conversion on the internet has a much, much faster lifespan than otherwise similar offline customer trajectories. The positive: this means more fast-paced business and potentially a lot more opportunity for profit. The challenge: fast response and fast follow up for a fast turn around is crucial.

As early as 2007, InsideSales conducted a study which indicated that the odds of contacting a lead are 100 times greater when the initial contact attempt is made within 5 minutes compared to 30 minutes following inquiry submission from an interested online party. In terms of pushing leads meaningfully forward, time also plays a significant role in qualification.

In 2011 Harvard Business Review found that companies that attempted contact within an hour of the information request were almost seven times more likely to qualify the lead (defined in the report as “having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker”) than the ones that waited just one hour more. And furthermore, those same fast responders were a whopping 60 times more likely to move the lead forward than the slow pokes that took a full 24 hours to make contact.

Despite this strong evidence of time sensitivity, HBR found that large numbers of companies were responding at a comparatively slow pace. But that was several years ago now, and the science of online lead generation is a quickly improving one. Last year, InsideSales reported that companies were responding an average of 39 hours faster since 2010, though many firms are still lagging behind.

CRM Advances: More Good News For Online Lead Gen

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software gets more advanced and savvy every day. People are forgetful and imprecise, but computers aren’t. Better understanding of online timelines means better outbound marketing. Automated lead scoring and emails to freshly generated leads, as well as plugged-in call centers with sales representatives waiting for the programmatic go-ahead to call a new potential customer (all in the appropriate time window, of course) comprise the profitable present of lead generation, as well as the promising beginnings of an even more advanced and efficient marketing future.

In addition to improved outbound methods, many companies are transitioning more and more to sophisticated inbound strategies. In a world with streaming video and really killer email filters, many potential customers are avoiding the majority of outbound marketing efforts, but by shifting their focus to production of high quality online content, many companies are finding new and innovative ways to catch consumer attention and draw in leads. With the number of digital consumers ever climbing, the internet has become, all in all, the perfect channel through which to realize favorable results at every part of the sales funnel.

2015 Sales Lead Budget: Are You Allocating Wisely?