Canadian Marketing Blog

Self-Qualification Intelligence

Why do we continue to have an overflow of low-quality responses to our marketing campaigns, or an inability to quickly find advanced-stage buyers, or a lack of insight into general market dynamics?

It continues to baffle me; marketing organizations put together well-crafted campaign deliverables – including white papers, seminars and webinars – then fail to ask prospects anything of importance before they give this information away. There is nothing wrong with asking questions regarding purchase intent, buying process and dynamics, and key issues that a prospect is trying to solve. Another excellent idea is to include two or three survey questions on a landing page, or within a response mechanism, then feed this data back to prospects in a future deliverable. While you may see overall campaign response rates drop because of people who disengage when asked to provide information, these will tend to be “lookers” rather than true potential buyers who see utility in trading insight for information that will help them frame and solve a problem. Every interaction you have with a prospect should be considered a golden opportunity to learn more about your marketplace, a byproduct that can be as valuable as a response. Leading marketers set information-collection goals for every campaign they run in order to force them to continually become more savvy about the prospect groups they are trying to attract.

Interesting post, Ally.

One of the main advantages of new media marketing is that is gives us the ability to "narrowcast" or talk to very specific communities in a much more engaging and intimate way than any of the old school or one-to-many tactics ever could.

As competition for our attention increases at a time when our interests are becoming increasingly fragmented, marketers need to be able to engage prospects in dialogue across many of the channels they already use every day.

Marketers get more attention than they think. But bad web form design undermines the quality of lead information they get in return.

With so many bad examples of forms out there, who can blame them? As buyers we have become accustomed to long-winded forms that assault us with a barrage of obtuse and irrelevant questions... all in the name of providing a "complete" record as possible to toss over to Sales as a lead.

Do I really need to answer your eight department-timeframe-need questions to get a 2-page whitepaper from you?

Would you believe my budget if I told you what it was?

The first step to improving lead quality is to take an incremental approach to building the relationship. Build the lead profile over several touches. Offer news, education and advice in exchange for information that is vital to the exchange process. For example, use a short form to ask for Industry in exchange for a vertical-specific whitepaper. Then ask for Job Title in exchange for a functional webcast.

Asking for timelines is a waste of time. Instead, organize your web content so you can pinpoint the sales cycle stage of your leads. Use content tagging tools to track behaviour and trigger notifications when leads are passively browsing instead of actively researching depth articles or comparing competitors, pricing and availability.

I'm always interested in seeing examples of forms and sites done right - links please!

Interesting post, Ally. Marketers get more attention than they think. But bad web form design undermines the quality of lead information they get in return.

With so many bad examples of forms out there, who can blame them? As buyers we have become accustomed to long-winded forms that assault us with a barrage of obtuse and irrelevant questions... all in the name of providing a "complete" record as possible to toss over to Sales as a lead.

Do I really need to answer your eight department-timeframe-need questions to get a 2-page whitepaper from you?

Would you believe my budget if I told you what it was?

The first step to improving lead quality is to take an incremental approach to building the relationship. Build the lead profile over several touches. Offer news, education and advice in exchange for information that is vital to the exchange process. For example, use a short form to ask for Industry in exchange for a vertical-specific whitepaper. Then ask for Job Title in exchange for a functional webcast.