Can Conversion Rate Optimization Improve Lead Quality?

February 3rd, 2010

There was a question posed in the comments section of my last post on Pay Per Click optimization that I thought I’d try to address: “What are your thoughts on using CRO to improve the quality of leads?”

Good question! Many people assume that optimizing for higher conversion rates in the Business to Business (B2B) environment always ends up decreasing lead quality. We at FutureNow don’t believe that for one minute, though. If you’re responsible for a B2B lead generation site, lead quality should be of equal importance to lead quantity.

Let’s face it; if your efforts at conversion rate optimizing decrease the quality of leads, your sales force will let you know about it! They’ll be in your office/cubicle/face very quickly pointing out how they’ve got less qualified leads to work with, and increasing quotas to hit. In B2B marketing, the main goal is to feed good leads that are far along in their buying process.

Let’s look at some reasons why conversion rate optimization tactics (when applied haphazardly) might decrease lead quality:

1) Shortening lead forms. It’s common sense that removing fields from your lead forms will likely increase conversion rate, but could easily decrease lead quality by not “qualifying” prospects. For example, many lead forms ask a question about whether the prospect has a “budget” in place. Those that don’t have an approved budget are considered low-quality, and are disqualified or de-prioritized. Removing fields like that from your lead forms should always be tested, and the test data should always be compared against any changes in lead quality.

2) Pushing traffic into the funnel too soon. Sometimes improving your calls to action, headlines, copy, and navigation can combine to funnel more traffic into your lead form, raising your conversion rate. But if the prospects who convert didn’t do as much up-front research, they may end up as lower quality leads. For example, if I’m looking for CRM software for my team of 5 salespeople, and you only work with teams of 20 or more, I’m a low-quality lead. If your efforts to increase conversion rate leave out that very important constraint, I’ll end up a lead that you don’t want!

3) Not being transparent about your pricing. Some B2B marketers don’t disclose pricing on the website (occasionally at the request of Sales). This tactic could affect conversion rate, but you’ll find that many leads are simply filling out a form so they can find out pricing. Many of them don’t have the budget and aren’t high-quality leads.

4) Over-promoting with gifts and incentives. I once worked in B2B marketing for a not-very-smart software company that offered the incentive of a free flash drive in addition to a white paper if they filled out a lengthy lead form. Can you guess what that did to the quality of leads? The worst part was all the low-quality, early stage leads calling to complain when they didn’t get their free flash drive within 6-8 weeks

So, yes, Conversion Rate Optimization could potentially decrease lead quality if not done carefully. Now, let’s look at some reasons why CRO, properly executed by a data-driven marketing team, can actually increase lead quality at the same time as increasing conversion rate:

1) Marrying conversion data with lead scoring. Since the ultimate goal is more high-quality leads, you have to carefully test and tweak every pixel and every letter of your lead form, THEN go back and analyze lead quality data to make sure you haven’t altered the quality. There aren’t any elegant, automated ways I know about of doing this, so you have to be willing to sit down with different data sources and compare, or sit down with Sales and hear their feedback on a regular basis.

2) Letting prospects nurture and qualify themselves throughout your site. Instead of putting a lead form on a landing page, try educating the prospect first, giving them more information that’s relevant, nurturing them, THEN asking for some contact info. It’s hard work making sure every prospect can get the content/answers they need to graduate to the next stage of their buying process, but it’s one way to move the needle on both conversion rate and lead quality.

3) “Opening the kimono” in regards to pricing. While this is somewhat controversial among old-school B2B marketers and salespeople, being transparent about your pricing can increase your lead quality. This doesn’t mean you have to have your pricing in 57-point font on your homepage. But, if your prospects are looking for pricing and don’t find it, you may end up with no leads at all. Figure out what kind of website behavior indicates lead qualification, and use that data to decide where to reveal pricing.

A few additional posts that are relevant to this topic are Melissa Burdon’s recent post about asking for the lead too early and my two-part review of Steven Woods’s book on B2B marketing and lead quality, Digital Body Language. UPDATE: Also relevant to the “quality vs. quantity” concept is MarketingSherpa’s recent article “Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-generated Leads.”

In B2B, Improving Conversion, Lead Generation, Website Optimization

Add Your Comments

Comments (23)

Ethical SEO Company
February 4th, 2010
12:57 am

For many websites that are simply looking for signups and basic levels of information to contact someone, it seems that decreasing the friction for the user to contact the company seems like a viable option. However, what you say is correct in that if you are aiming for higher quality leads from the website, increasing the friction may only pass through those that are deeply interested in your product or service.
Andrew@BloggingGuide
February 4th, 2010
12:58 am

I agree with number2, it is best to educate them, telling them the advantages of the program/product, telling them the benefits they can gain, how it can help them first before asking for anything from them. And also number 3, where it’s better to be transparent and tell them the price right there and then.
Rob Smith
February 4th, 2010
4:01 am

No 3) in the top list is a killer. So many companies do not want to disclose even a range of pricing, saying things are always bespoke and priced to the customer. I think this leads to a lot of lower quality leads. It also generally leads to the feeling that a company is expensive if there is no pricing in certain markets.
pariuri
February 4th, 2010
4:18 am

The advantages of the product and the benefits from using that program is the key.
Kristina Allen
February 4th, 2010
10:34 am

You bring up a lot of great points here such as the need to experiment with many different types of elements, and also the need to sit down and analyze all kinds of data sources for better optimization.

One effective method we’re using at ion to qualify visitors is pre-conversion segmentation. With pre-conversion segmentation, we don’t include a form on the initial landing page page — just a quick choice to make about who they are and what they’re looking for. From there, the user can quickly place him or herself into the right bucket and/or level in the buying cycle. This seems to work great because, as you mention, it allows the lead to receive very targeted information.

-Kristina, @ion_interactive
Jason Hawkins
February 4th, 2010
7:47 pm

This is wonderful information. I believe it is all truly accurate and many times you would have to bookmark 10 other sites when the information is all here. “2 thumbs up”
Anonymous
February 4th, 2010
8:21 pm

[...] couple of posts on grokdotcom are adding some insight. Brendan Regan notes that marketers who try to increase their conversion rate often do so by lowering the quality of [...]
Montreal Web Strategist
February 6th, 2010
6:41 pm

As usual common sense makes takes lead. I like the second recommendation because it implies that the site has to make sense and let people decide on their own.
Merc
February 7th, 2010
3:24 am

wow..thank you very much for this useful information. I do look forward in reading your blogs..
Corona Homes For Sale
February 7th, 2010
4:58 pm

Qualifying leads with the contact form is key, and you hit it on the head. Less on the form lowers the quality of the lead. Not using a required registration form prior to providing service is also a way to reduce several weak leads.
Michaleen
February 7th, 2010
8:21 pm

Great points. CRO only works if we can deliver the “right” leads!
ICT Learning
February 8th, 2010
8:28 am

Provide genuine insight to the client and with good leadership, you will win in each target marketing.

Business clients appreciate the knowledge is very important and that we can use as a resource.
Marco
February 8th, 2010
10:02 am

It would seem these two go hand in hand. Can you really improve lead quality without optimizing your conversion rate?
Jason
February 8th, 2010
1:54 pm

I agree great points but it all boils down to quality leads and sales conversions. Thats why we are in business to begin with to make money. 5 targeted leads is better than 1000 untargeted leads anyday. Great points I enjoyed the read!
SEO Company Delhi
February 9th, 2010
4:15 am

Less on the form lowers the quality of the lead. Not using a required registration form prior to providing service is also a way to reduce several weak leads.
Dennis Head
February 10th, 2010
11:49 am

Having run a F 500 B2B lead program for 8 years, The first criteria for any lead is quality, does it align with the sales force. You will always try to maximize your lead volume, but not at the expense of lead quality. 100% of our enterprise size leads were tele qualified against a standard quality criteria. Those leads converted to SQL leads by sales at a 70 to 80% rate.
We had a good process that matched up lead source to MQL conversion rates. Based on the conversion rate. This allowed us to use conversion rate and cost of the inquiry to determine the best ROI.
Re #1 on lead forms we had an ongoing battle with the Webs team over how much information to ask. They seemed to be focused only on the # of clicks vs the quality of information we needed to qualify a lead. There is some happy balance including asking for more info during the nurturing process. The key is to have a standard data collection process so you can automate and score your leads. We had one registration form that we used for all lead sources be it EM, DM, Web or trade shows. This standard minimal data allowed us to have consistent data that gave us enough to start the qualification process
I believe gifts and incentives need to be focused on the quality content that drives your lead / Sales process. White papers ect, giving away merchandise that is not part of your market focus just encourages traffic that may not be of your target market and diminishes qualified lead conversions.
Dennis Head edemand Leads consulting
bananadvd.com
February 10th, 2010
1:25 pm

You bring up a lot of great points here such as the need to experiment with many different types of elements, and also the need to sit down and analyze all kinds of data sources for better optimization.

One effective method we’re using at ion to qualify visitors is pre-conversion segmentation. With pre-conversion segmentation, we don’t include a form on the initial
JKeys
February 13th, 2010
8:47 pm

Great stuff as usuall. It seems to distill down to the same concept so many miss that you have to out in the effort and stop wasting time looking for the easy!
Tribulus terrestris extract
February 16th, 2010
6:41 am

I absolutely hate when i can not find pricing option or i have to do something to see it. If i cannot see the pricing option in maximum of 2 clicks then i will take my money elsewhere.
Digital Marketing Agency UK
February 17th, 2010
9:13 am

Am at SES London and heard Bryan E give this morning’s keynote. Whilst many of the points you raise are valid they would contradict some of the agreed ‘best-practice’ conversion elements.

I think the comment about testing is really what I see from these, with the points as your initial ideas, rather than they will work?
Can Conversion Rate Optimization Improve Lead Quality? | Simple, effective and affordable small business marketing
February 20th, 2010
3:05 pm

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LebSEO Design
March 3rd, 2010
10:50 am

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Rhoda Polsgrove
March 16th, 2010
9:17 pm

Satisfactory blog, some interesting information. I remember 9 of days ago, I have found a similar post. Does anyone know how to track future posts?