Developing a campaign that effectively feeds the lead pool is great. Devising an effective SEO strategy that successfully steers traffic toward your business is awesome. Where you go from here, however, that is everything!
Regardless of how good your marketing team is at developing new leads or how well your lead generation program is working, improper lead response will make it all an act of futility. The good news is that we know how to properly handle incoming leads…
The Golden Rules
Like every industry marketing has a set of absolutes, consider these the golden rules of lead response:
The sooner the better:
There is no such thing as being too quick to respond to any incoming lead. This isn’t a dating game where he or she doesn’t want to appear too anxious, in fact, a little excitement can be good. We want the lead to know that we want to serve them, to provide a solution or a product to meet their needs. A quick response is the first indication of that desire to cater to them and potentially the biggest step in the process of making them a customer. One report discussing lead response said that your are “…100x less likely to make contact if the first call is made 30 minutes after submission. The odds of making contact drop by 3000x if the first call is made 5 hours after lead submission.”
Once is not enough:
Respond fast and then wait, at least for a little while. The second golden rule is always follow up. Perhaps your response was overlooked, diverted to the recycle bin or simply ignored. A second timely and polite follow up per their response is never likely to be viewed as inconsiderate. A story cited this statistic that said “80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up.
It may often be that second response (or the third or fifth), that is just the nudge your lead needs to become a customer.
Carry a conversation:
The newest addition to the golden rules is centered around the customer experience movement. Empowered by social media and the advancements in technology, customers now expect to be courted, they are looking for relationships. Marketing is no longer about straight business aspects and “what are you selling and how much” deals. Tell the lead about your business, about you and use these conversations to find out about more about them.
Keys to Improving Your Results
Building on the golden rules and stemming from the newest inclusion to those, we can use these conversations to improve our strategy and our business. These conversations will not only improve our relationship and understanding of one lead but begin to build a profile of our audience. That will avail insights and more effective tactics to improve our marketing efforts. The key here is to have real and mutually beneficial conversations with our leads. This human connection and desire to be heard can be integrated into all of our marketing tools.
“ Emails that were slightly to moderately positive OR slightly to moderately negative elicited 10-15% more responses than emails that were completely neutral.”
That report just states what we have already been talking about, people want connection, emotion and experience – that even includes email. Make those response emails personal and don’t forget, it is about them. Touch on their needs or their pain points, you don’t need to immediately offer a resolution but you do need to connect and relate.
You have put a great deal of thought, time, resources and effort into your campaign, make it count with fast, effective and personal lead responses. It is what your customers want and you want customers – those are tactics that work for everyone.