In our ongoing series on lead generation, the best place to start would be with some suggested best practices.  And the best place to start with all things online is with the IAB  – Interactive Advertising Bureas, and their  best practices  As a media buying agency, our job is to match the target audience with the online opportunity as closely as we can to get highest qualtiy leads for our clients – at the best price, of course.  While the media is a very important part, it’s not the only consideration.  We have also helped with the overall prospecting strategy, sourced vendors, and overseen many projects for our clients over the years.   Here are a few tips:

1.  Clearly define, target audience.  Sounds simple but it takes everything from a quantified analysis of the current customer base to converations with the sales reps to flesh out the full picture.  Dun and Bradstreet seems to be the primary source, but there are others.  We use Direct Marketing Partners for customized phone research into client databases to gain a much better understanding of who their customer is.  Very granular, but always worth the time and expense if the project is well scoped out.

2.  Clearly define the objective of the current campaign – is the  target audience for this product or offer consistent with other camaigns.  Don’t assume that one customer definition will fit all marketing efforts.

 3. Be clear about what constitutes a lead.  Will it be standard business card info, do you need or want the phone number, or email address?  Do you need or want additional information – like title, function, how far down the decision making path they are?  Additional questions may mean a more costly lead, but will allow for much better targeting and sales follow up.  If you don’t define this up-front, and communicate this clearly with the source of the data, you may not get what you are expecting….and guess whose fault that is?

4.  Lead quality.  In addition to defining what you want in a lead, be sure that the source of the data – ad networks, online pubishers, mailing lists etc, can provide what you are looking for and can substantiate how they determine the information.   Transparency of data – where ever,  possible will eliminate mis-understanding, poor leads, and lack of closings or conversions.  We ask enough questions of media sources to be annoying – then I know we are doing our job.

5.   Landing page  – is it clean and clear?  Do ask a couple of additional questions to gain more intelligence on the lead, but only 2-3 questions.  Any more and you will discourage completion.

6.  Prepare whoever will be doing the lead follow up.  Are the leads going to be scored?  Eloqua and Marketo do a good job with this, but there are many other suppliers.  Do telemarketers have well crafted scripts?  Do the sales reps calling on the leads have enough information and preparation to sell well?

7.  Lead nurture.  Leads rarely close with a single phone call or sales call.  Is there a schedule of ongoing touch points – follow up emails, phone calls, etc scheduled and scripted,  to warm the lukewarm lead up to actually buying?  When we have clients not happy with lead quality, and we have confidence in the qualityof the data used to provide the lead, I have to question what is happening to the leads once they are pitched to the sales team.

If  you are not getting “good” leads, or aren’t closing on enough of the ones that are being delivered, then some of these tips are not being followed.  Take another look at the whole process, from the begining, and start making improvements.