Are B2B Leads Getting Worse?

Dave had an interesting point in the comments section of the last post...

"I *hate* people who focus on a metric and obstinately disregard that it doesn't signify what it used to."

Let's talk about one metric in particular. Conversions. Is the quest to increase conversion rates on our landing pages sacrificing the quality of our leads? Have our efforts to make it so incredibly easy for people to convert made the actual act of conversion meaningless? Is our effort to lower the cost per conversion increasing our cost per selling opportunity?

On a side note, has increased conversions of lower quality leads single-handedly led to the rise of the ultra-competitive lead nurturing space, due to the need to further qualify our web leads?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section...

Comments

[Dave deBronkart]

Well, crikey, yes, conversion for conversion's sake just gives you more conversions. Shortly after I got into this game I started hollering about "deal gen not lead gen."

I've gotten to where I can't have a meaningful analytics conversation with someone who doesn't comprehend the question "What do we mean by 'lead'?"

This is also why (imo) Salesforce for Google AdWords is so important, as is tracking opportunities and revenue at the level of the individual landing page. It's harder in B2B than in e-commerce, but it's gotta be done.

[Dave deBronkart]

Re lead nurturing I don't (yet) use any lead nurturing tool, but in my view, that's a different subject, at least in the hands of a competent thinker.

Maybe I'm privileged, in a perverse way, because we sell appointment scheduling systems, and inevitably many of our "leads" come from people who wanted to make a doctor's appointment, and nonetheless filled out our form and downloaded our product literature. (You know this, but your readers might not.) So our very first job is to filter out the great majority who have no interest.

BUT: lead nurturing is in our future. IMO, in long-cycle B2B sales, you can view an early-in-the-cycle visitor as "go away and come back when you're ready" or you can engage them in conversation that earns repeat visits.

Like, having a worthwhile blog is a good start. You're about a year ahead of me there. :)

[Justin King]

I think we start to miss the point, when we start to over emphasize one point or another. Have you ever worked for a company that ran their business from the latest book? Meaning, whatever they had recently read in book, they tried to apply it word for word in their business and the business had lost it's own identity? I see this happen all the time with smart, progressive small business owners. Books are great, they help you make better decisions - hopefully better then the author first made. But, you have to understand your business, your industry, your passions and your employees and you can't mimic others. A lot of these measurements are the same way. Conversion is great - it's an incredible focus in fact. However, don't let conversion override your own authenticity as a firm. If marketing is about conversations and dialogue, then we should be listening more then we talk. Pushing any agenda more hurts the dialogue. Make sure you know who you are, who your customers are and keep your identity. It's all about balance - brand versus product, conversion versus "free", relevant content versus SEO. Balance and keep your identity.

[Jame]

So I don't think the leads are getting worse. We just know sooner which ones are bad or good. And well can measure the ratio of good leads to bad.

At my organization, we are getting started nurturing. But we are still working through what signals=good, and which ones=bad. This is obviously a slow process, since we are always waiting on feedback from sales. But I think nuturing is on the right path. With the abundance of info out there...... we need all of the gates we can get to weed through the noise!