By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
In doing the research for my recent presentation—The Marketing Strategies, Tactics, and Tools That Will Help You Convert Leads—at Intacct’s strategic partner meeting, I was surprised by the numbers I found relative to lead conversion.
According to the report by Hubspot, The State of Inbound 2016, 74% rank “converting contacts/leads to customers” as their top marketing priority in the next 12 months.
But, according to Econsultancy …
- For every $92 dollars spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them.
- Only about 22% of businesses are satisfied with their lead conversion rates.
Yes, that’s correct. After spending $92 to generate a lead, once prospects have finally identified themselves to the seller, a paltry dollar’s worth is spent to nurture their interest and convert the lead.
Perhaps those numbers are directly related to the lack of marketing tools and technology companies are willing to invest in. According to the Hubspot report referenced above, 22% of 4,500 respondents are not even sure what CRM is. So we can bet that marketing automation systems, which would help facilitate these nurture marketing programs and drive improved lead conversion, are probably an even a bigger mystery!
The fact that 22% of businesses were actually satisfied with their lead conversion rates was an equally big “wow” for me. I didn’t think that many would be pleased considering if we’re getting a 3% conversion rate, we’d like 10%. If we’re getting 10%, we’d like 50%, right?!
The good news is there’s no shortage of info online about how to improve lead conversion rates, many of which don’t cost a lot.
- Dedicated landing pages (~3X the conversion rate)
- Videos (videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%, Source: Eyeview)
- A/B testing (the most used method for improving conversions, Source: Econsultancy)
- Contrasting color usage
- and much more
There are lots of creative tactics you can use to win the lead conversion game. After all, it doesn’t make a lot of financial sense to simply generate leads if they don’t convert to opportunities and, subsequently, closed deals.
Let us know if we can assist with marketing strategies, campaigns and content pieces that help you not only generate leads, but convert those leads throughout your marketing pipeline.
