Understand Marketing Nuances to Generate Highly Qualified Leads (HQLs)

The world of marketing is tangled and full of puzzles. Agree or not!

Since 19-something, when the concept of marketing incepted, till today, there has been a drastic change in the way people market their products and services. More so, methods and techniques that marketers practiced a few years back might not be ineffect today.

To be precise, there was a monopoly of manufacturers, and the marketing fundamental was simple – the product will sell automatically if the consumer really needs it. In fact, they used to sell at higher prices since the customers had very little choice.

To now, when you can find thousands of vendors for a single product type. With an advanced mindset and awareness, where people emphasize utility, quality, value for money items, the competition is tough. The theory is if the product is manufactured, keeping in mind the quality, environment, and social concerns, it is more likely to sell.

In addition to it, the efforts have to be in multiple directions today. It is only possible to reach the customers easily if the marketers ensure to lure the customers with marketing tactics such as install base campaigns, sales enablement services, HQL sales campaigns, content syndication marketing, and PBM solutions. However, the similarity is thatmarketers can still identify the potential leads and make strategies based on the target audience. They can still find out what entices the audience and strategize the marketing tactics revolving around it, which is more or less the same to the early years of marketing.

So, one thing is clear – the marketing hustle becomes easy when you have access to quality leads or highly qualified leads. The experts of this domain are demand generation and marketing qualified leads companies.

What are highly qualified leads for your business?

Do you work at or run a business that lives or dies by the number of qualified leads that come in. For those in the services business, especially B2B businesses, know the struggle. The b2b businesses are about getting more leads than they close into contracts. The second answer is “converting more leads into sales,” this happens after the business has figured top-of-the-funnel lead generation processes.

“The sales team owns the sales funnel. But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel.” – Doug Kessler, Co-founder and Creative Director of Velocity

Meaning, the duties lie in the hands of B2B marketer to fill the top layer with qualified leads, including marketing qualified leads (MQL), sales qualified leads (SQL), and highly qualified leads (HQL).

These are the leaders that fulfillthe service level agreement (SLA) between marketing and sales. Someone who meets the ideal customer profile, has an interest in learning about the company, can answer some basic qualifying questions, expressed interest in talking to one of the sales executives can be termed as a highly qualified lead.

How to generate qualified leads?

Lead generation is a broad term consisting of various methods & techniques. Marketers either prefer the below techniquesof lead generation:

·         Content syndication

·         Outbound content promotion by phone or email

·         B2B appointment setting services

·         B2B demand generation services

·         Website chat

·         Event leads

OR

Ensure the inclusion of these steps in their marketing strategy:

Understand what makes a qualified lead

Whatmakes it look like a quality lead is when they find that lead sees a lot of value in your solution. Also, it is required for them to know your business purpose, credibility (years in business or success story), and solutions that define your business idea. It gets easier to convince someone to purchase if they have a good idea aboutyour business.

Establish buyer’s persona

It is also required to get inside the brain of the buyer as it provides a deeper level of insight like none other. Customer surveys, focus groups,and install base campaigns are all the tools for learning how to build the trust of target buyers and influencers.

Use the right data

After identifying the potential buyers for your business, you can find the tangible aspects of their desires and behaviors. It is not only the generation of data but also making the right use of the data to communicate with the buyers and develop methodologies for converting them. So, ensure that your plan has room for data solutions services too.

Building revenue model

HQL lead generation is about talking to the right people at the right time in their business stage. As quality comes into focus, it is required for you to emphasize less on more number of prospects but more on sales-ready leads. Though you will get a limited number of leads with marketing services such as PBM solutions and BANT campaign, all of those are sales qualified leads thathave a higher chance of a conversion.

Moreover, your efforts can also revolve around using long-tail keywords, referring to social media to build a relationship with customers, creating landing pages in the form of product demos, advanced webinars, and software trials. All of these practices will create a path toward sales qualified leads or highly qualified leads for a business.

And,

You might be doing this last practice, but, if not, give it a go. Actively connect with prospects in professional networks such as LinkedIn, AngelList, and F6S. These platforms help professionals, start-up founders, and decision-makers connect, which is ultimately positive for building a marketing base.

To sum up

In a business environment, where buyers are making decisions about what companies to engage with using interactive tools, the quality of leads has become an essential thing to consider. A key feature of the change is that there will be concentration toward fewer but more profitable deals.

Fortunately, there is a clear roadmap for HQL lead generation now. It is not a single factor or method that leads to highly qualified leads ready to convert. Several techniques and marketing strategiescome together in the right manner for final conversion. The above article involves a list of methods and techniques, when implemented,will draw positive sales results.

Note: These are not all in all tactics for the generation of highly qualified leads; you might come across several other ways.

Understand what works best for your business and put it into practice! 

How to Play with Data for Qualitative Lead Generation and Effective Marketing?

You hold good command of your business. You know the right drill to sell the product or service. You have the right bunch of people around you—your team. But there could be one thing which is holding back your business from growth.

It is the right set of information or data.

Once you own the right set of data–ranging from consumer persona, buyer’s demands, likes, and dislikes, and of course, the right product to offer—you may very well venture out on the targeted install base campaigns and marketing strategies.

The world that we live in today is full of technological marvels. Now, more than ever, it becomes quite important that even the remotest marketing agency has the necessary armor to survive in the competitive world. For small, medium, or large scale enterprises, the leaders can make a difference to the outcomes by resorting to marketing qualified leads services, data solutions, demand generation solutions, and HQL generation services for the consumers.

The importance of the right data cannot be underestimated in the modern landscape. You won’t find the strategies that are created on the basis of instincts and education.

Do you relate to this list of data gaps?

With data gaps, it refers to key pieces of information that are missing in planning and execution. You and your teams are in search of data to conduct some analysis or draw a conclusion. These data gaps can include knowledge about customers, sales prospects, list of competitors and their approach, and the internal performance of the company. Generally, people find out these gaps in the upfront strategy setting and at all stages of execution.

Build up your marketing and sales plan with the right data

For businesses, it is not just sufficient to create an effective marketing and sales plan but also implement ways to generate marketing qualified leads.

1.     Data solutions

For optimizing data, it is required to cleanse the data and remove duplication (if it exists). The service of de-duplication includes identification and removal of duplicate records in marketing automation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms. Data solutions include normalization of data, which is about ensuring that the data is clean, complete, and meaningful for the business.

2.     Demand generation solutions

It involves a technique where customers are engaged and informed up to a level where they get excited about the offered products and services. The process of engaging customers to complete the process of demand generation includes reaching out to the market, promoting new products, and nudging silent, inactive customers. It is about creating a strong database of potential customers proactively for the future sales requirements of the market. Demand generation involves the complete strategic process of acquiring potential customers.

3.     Install base targeting

With the identification of the database of users that use one or more of the products, and by analyzing the install base of competitors, you can easily unveil new insights into the buyer’s profile and preferences. The approach is generally recognized by install base targeting or install base marketing.

4.     HQL solutions

You might not know, but some leads are perfectly primed to purchase. Some individuals are involved in the decision-making process, and who are ready to get into meaningful conversations and have a requirement that your solution can address.

So, the drill is to identify these sales-ready leads and then develop assets and campaigns to engage and qualify them. The data is generated in a way where the analysts find out potential leads, also called high quality lead generation, examine whether they will fit or not, and then pass on their info to the sales and marketing teams.

5.     ABM & PBM solutions

The ABM (account-based marketing) integrates touchpoints with key account contacts across multiple channels with an objective to increase engagement and conversion. It generates data that contains the list of prospects that are likely to buy and the right time to engage accounts. ABM marketing involves personalizing user experience by gaining their trust, custom creation of content, and educating the audience about the products and services.

Another quite similar and next level method to ABM is PBM (person-based marketing). In this approach, the marketers and salesperson get to talk to the prospective consumers and learn about their behavior and choices. They then send out ads only to the decision-makers in the targeted company and generate data out of the ad impact and the reaction as soon as the email is sent.

Sharpen your marketing and sales plan with the right approach

1.     Improve customer lifetime value

There are several opportunities to identify underserved customers. Take a step toward identification, which will boost the company’s revenues fivefold for its products. This approach also helps in the retention of customers. Also, the business needs to find out how to engage a customer well before he takes some action and decides to leave. Install base marketing and install base targeting come in quite handy here.

2.     Change management

Earlier, traditional sales planning relied on account segmentation and historical knowledge than up-to-date facts. But it leads to a sales model that will become inefficient and inconsistent over time. If a sales operations team introduces basic analytics to sales planning, resource allocation becomes much more effective. It has the ability to turn up sales by 5–10%. Analytics has the power of revolutionizing the understanding of sales talent and field behavior.

These analytics also help in identifying the best salespeople and allocate them the most important accounts. It will also reveal the important traits of high-performing people, which will help in the development of other individuals too.

Conclusion

So, basically, when the idea is to enhance the sales and marketing plan, as a team, you should find out what you don’t know. It is like arming yourself with intelligent data that will help in making meaningful and informed decisions. The data can be generated after implementing HQL generation, ABM, install base targeting, and demand generation solutions. Take the help or outsource a marketing qualified leadscompany offering these solutions and lead the way toward actionable insights. Therefore, the data and information will always lead to a thriving business as the status quo is a dangerous place in a business marketplace.