Qualifying an Inbound B2B Lead Generation Campaign

Utilizing social media to enhance your internet marketing campaigns is a great way to generate interest.  It is said that a general pay-per-click campaign will result in a 3% conversion rate. And a more focused campaign, that includes a landing page geared towards the visitor, will actually increase the conversion rate to about 16 – 20%. These are great numbers – or are they?

Conversion in most business to business scenarios is not the same as a sale. So the people who have converted still have to be qualified and nurtured. From the blog posting, ‘Sales Numbers,’ 60% of all sales occur after the fourth call, which means that these conversions still have to be processed through the sales funnel.

We worked with a SaaS company to help with that process. With our support the 20% conversion rate is narrowed down to 10%, but those folks are now qualified. We make the calls and ask four prioritized questions. When we have determined the next step in the sales process we either turn the leads over to the sales people, or keep the converts with us and continue to nurture.

So when we do hand off the leads to the sales folks at this social networking company, they get qualified leads as opposed to suspects ‘that came in through the website,’ and are now willing to focus on closing them and making the sales!