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Lead Generation Best Practices: Segment & Test Your Market
| Guest post by: Dan McDade |
Article Overview:
- Append data points like SIC code, revenue and employee size to contact records.
- Segment your market database into testable sample cells.
- Test the cells to determine high-value and most-likely-to-buy segments.
- Deploy a full court press against segments with the highest lead rates.
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Free Download - Marketing Tip: If You Only Do One Thing, Qualify Your Leads By Dan McDade |
Lead Generation Best Practices: Segment & Test Your Market
As companies generate sales leads from marketing initiatives like webinars, tradeshows, landing pages, website downloads and social media, a symptom of success is that marketing databases grow by hundreds and thousands of names. The downside is that there is no intelligence about whether the names meet lead qualifying criteria like company size, target industry, decision maker title, business pain, budget and purchasing timeframe. There are far too many leads in the database for marketing to effectively contact and qualify the names, and sales' focus on driving revenue rightly rules out culling through lists of hand-raisers.
Before spending on a lead generation program, it is imperative that you segment your market and then test your market, offer and media so that you can identify segments most likely to be qualified sales leads.
Why? While a list of 1,000 target companies may generate a 5% lead rate, an analysis of results typically identifies market segments with higher and lower lead rates. For example, let's say there are five discrete segments of 200 companies each, and these segments have lead rates of 9%, 7%, 5%, 3% and 1% that—in total—average an overall 5% lead rate. The objective is to spend marketing dollars on the segments with the highest test lead rates.
Start by enhancing test segments with data points like SIC code, revenue, employee size and growth rate. This added data drives sample calls that validate segments as high-value and most likely to buy.
Once segmented lead rates have been established through testing, a full court press should be deployed against the segments with the highest lead rates—thereby improving results and maximizing marketing dollars. Less expensive media are used to market to segments with lower lead rates, and periodic calls can be made into low priority samples to monitor buying trends.
Properly executed, a lead development program of this nature acts quickly to identify the real qualified sales opportunities, keep sales focused on driving revenue and increase ROI on marketing investments.
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Article Tags: Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Sales Lead Generation
Referred by: http://www.findnewcustomers.com
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About the Author: Dan McDade RSS for Dan's articles - Visit Dan's website Dan McDade founded PointClear in 1997 with the mission to be the first and best company providing prospect development services to business-to-business companies with complex sales processes. He has been instrumental in developing the innovative strategies that drive revenue for PointClear clients nationwide. In addition to serving as president and CEO of PointClear, Dan is the author of The Truth About Leads, an insightful book that sheds light on the little-known secrets that help focus B2B lead-generation efforts, align sales and marketing organizations and drive revenue. Prior to starting PointClear, Dan served as president of UST, The Business Marketing Group, a high-tech B2B marketing services firm. The company, serving leading technology companies including Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Oracle and SAP, grew over 500% during his tenure. From 1989 to 1991, Dan was an independent consultant providing direct marketing, telemarketing and new business development consulting services. Clients included Sears, Exxon, Rodale Press, R.J. Reynolds, and The Ritz-Carlton. Dan also served as vice president of marketing with Jackson & Perkins in Medford, Ore. Dan is chairman of the board of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Education Collaborative, an organization promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in Georgia's middle and high schools. He is a member of TAG, and also serves on the boards of TechAmerica Southeast (formerly AEA); the Business & Technology Alliance, a TAG society; and TAG Marketing. The Sales Lead Management Association named Dan one of the 50 most influential people in sales lead management in 2009 and 2010. Dan is also the author of ViewPoint | The Truth About Lead Generation, a blog exploring issues related to B2B sales, marketing and lead generation. Click here to visit Dan's website   Lead Generation Best Practices Agree on Lead Definition Sales Process Even a Man Lost Knows Where He Wants to Go Teleservices Business Process Outsourcing Want to Go North or South Lead Generation Best Practices Fewer Leads Are Better Judicial Branch Needed to Keep Sales Lead Management Honest |
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