Four Simple Lead Qualification Techniques to Increase Clicks and Conversions
Increasing your channels' conversion rates may appear to be a great idea. The goal of most paid media advertisers is to have a click-through rate. However, if a large percentage of those users are low-quality, then we are examining vanity metrics.
I often tell my clients that it is better to have fewer leads that are more likely to convert than to spend a lot of money on advertising on users who are not a good fit for their objectives.
Lead qualification comes into play here. I'll discuss the following in this post:
What is the qualification of leads?
Lead qualification is the process of ensuring that the leads you generate from your advertisements and other marketing materials are the most likely to help you achieve your business objectives. Qualified visitors are more likely to take action on your website, and qualified leads are more likely to convert to sales. A successful lead generation process requires lead qualification.
MQL versus SQL
You may be familiar with the terms marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads from the B2B world (SQLs). MQLs are potential customers who have expressed interest in your product or service but are likely not yet prepared to buy, making them qualified for, well, more marketing, specifically, nurturing campaigns to move them down the funnel where they can convert from prospects to customers.
SQLs are people who have expressed interest in your offering and are very likely to make a purchase. Some leads arrive as SQLs, while others begin as MQLs and develop into SQLs with good lead management and nurturing.
What makes lead qualification crucial?
It goes without saying that you want your marketing efforts to generate qualified leads because you want to increase your customer base. However, there is also a financial aspect to it. If you're running paid advertisements and your click-through rate is high, it probably means your offer is compelling and/or your copywriting is excellent. But would your most likely customers find it appealing?
Even though you might be paying less per click if you're getting lots of clicks, what good is that if you're not getting conversions? The money you spend on unqualified traffic is wasted, not saved.
Find out where yours is with our free Google Ads Performance Grader, speaking of wasted spend!
Therefore, while click-through rate and cost per click are crucial, conversion rates-and lead qualification are what ultimately determine your ROI.
How to determine the criteria for your lead qualification
Knowing your target market and ideal customers will help you determine how to qualify leads for your business. Several lead qualification formulas may also be applicable to your company, but BANT is the most fundamental. Budget: Can the potential customer afford your goods or services?
Are they the one who makes the final decision regarding the purchase?
What is the need that they want to fulfill? Does it match the preferences of your regular customers?
How quickly do they need this need to be met?
Although the copy on your landing pages and the data you request in your forms will help to qualify your leads, this does not address the initial problem of paying for unqualified clicks. We'll go over four ways to qualify your clicks in the following section.
Lead qualifying techniques
Before a user even reaches your landing page, these techniques let you increase the quality of your PPC leads.
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1. Be precise in your advertisement copy
Direct communication is the simplest way to inform someone that they are not the kind of customer you are looking for. It makes perfect sense to use specific wording in your ads to discourage clicks from users who are not qualified to see them. I am aware that a lower click-through rate is difficult to see in the PPC world. But if those leads never become customers, click-through rates are meaningless.
As an illustration, one of my clients offered a CRM solution for start-ups and small businesses. They naturally targeted terms like "small business CRM," but they also targeted a large number of generic CRM terms that don't include the phrase "small business." We made sure to pre-qualify our leads in these ad groups by using copy that was specifically targeted at small business owners. We informed potential customers that our CRM wasn't appropriate for them if they worked for a company with more than 50 employees. Yes, in those ad groups, our CTR decreased. But the quality of our lead improved. Our costs also increased as our CTR dropped. Our cost/conversion numbers decreased significantly as a result of lower costs and a higher conversion rate. For us, that metric is the most significant one. And the decline in CTR didn't harm us at all when the quality improved with a lower cost per conversion.
And if all that metric talk left you perplexed, check out our Ultimate Guide to PPC Metrics and everything will make sense!
2. Employ price escalation
You should approach your paid search ad extensions with the same mindset. If your product is more expensive, you probably only want to attract wealthy customers. In your ad extensions, highlight the price or the status of your product.
Typical sticker shock Users who see higher prices and lack the necessary funds are likely not to click the advertisement. For the time being, I am reserving my ad spending for the ideal user. Not everything has to revolve around money, either. Perhaps you modify your value messages according to the appropriate user. Don't cater to everyone who might be interested in your product; instead, tailor everything to the ideal audience you want to reach.
3. Improve lead forms for quality rather than quantity
For their lead forms, Google and Facebook both offer different lead form types. Advertisers can choose to optimize for either more leads or more qualified leads as a result. Of course, more volume will be the channels' default setting. They will encourage you to generate more leads, which will enhance the appearance of your PPC reporting. Though you might want to change your optimization settings to concentrate on higher quality if you have tested lead forms in these two channels and received low-quality leads
The Google Ads lead form extension is available as follows: Google is clearly attempting to frighten us a little. It advises that fewer leads may be obtained at a higher cost per lead (which is true). However, I'm always prepared to pay more for leads that are better qualified and easier for the sales teams of my clients to close. Create two distinct forms, one concentrating on volume and the other on quality, and test which one attracts users who are more qualified.
4. Make your lead forms more question-intensive.
Numerous lead forms on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, etc. begin by requesting the bare minimum information from users, such as name and phone number. The fields are typically automatically filled in based on the user's profile information. Due to how simple it is to fill out and submit the form, you might not be pre-qualifying users as a result.
The good news is that most lead generation channels allow advertisers to ask extra questions or create custom questions. Here are a few instances:
LinkedIn lead form-specific inquiries
You can add unique questions to your LinkedIn advertising lead forms to elicit additional data from users. This will require a little more work from them, but if they're willing to put in a little extra effort to provide you with more details, they might be more interested in your offering. Additionally, it's acceptable to ask questions that scare off potential users.
Custom Facebook lead ad queries
For Facebook lead ad forms, you can design unique questions just like on LinkedIn. You can ask the user to type in a response, select an option from a menu, or even build a conditional answer set based on a CSV file that has been uploaded. Additional queries for Google lead ads
There are additional questions on Google as well, but you cannot personalize them. Instead, you get a list of answer choices divided into different categories or industry subsets. To gather more data from your users, you can add multiple qualifying questions to your lead forms. Since many of them are multiple choice, users are unlikely to fill out the form if they cannot find the option that best describes them in the questions. 5. Use Local Services Ads on Google.
This is a great lead qualification strategy if your company provides services. In other words, you can create and manage ads directly from your Google Business Profile, and Google will make sure that only customers in your service area see them.
Additionally, after a user clicks on your advertisement, Google asks them to confirm their service area and the job they're looking for. The searcher will be matched with you if you are qualified for the position and are available in that area, and they can check your credentials, ratings, and Google reviews before contacting you.
Google will direct them to a more suitable Local Service Ad if you're not a good fit for their position or you don't operate in their area.
With lead qualification, you can get more for your money.
You can always improve your optimization decisions to focus on the right user with the help of internal data from your CRM. But regardless of whether you have access to CRM data, you can still make an effort with your lead form settings and ad copy to try and qualify the user before they even visit your website. There may be a decline in traffic and conversions. However, if you are qualifying the right users, you should experience lower churn and better close rates. Here are the tactics once more: