Online Programs Deliver Questionable Lead Quality

Renee Yeager - June 30, 2009

As a B2B marketer, I’m a big believer in the importance of providing quality leads to your sales team and here’s why:

1)  Passing unqualified leads requires salespeople to spend time qualifying them, which takes them away from what they should be doing:  selling.
2)  Hand enough unqualified leads to your sales team that do not become real opportunities and you will lose credibility as a marketer–a stigma that is very difficult to overcome.

There are many companies out there–cutting edge, online marketing companies–that will promise large quantities of qualified leads with paid search and search engine optimization (SEO).  After trying and testing a variety of online marketing initiatives over the years, I have yet to be convinced.  Last week, Marketing Sherpa’s Chart of the Week supported my position. Marketing Sherpa Chart

Marketers were asked to rate the quantity and quality of leads generated for SEO, paid Google search, paid search on vertical search engines and paid search on Yahoo!, AOL, MSN and Ask.com.  Not surprisingly, SEO ranked best for high quantity and high quality leads; what’s interesting, though, is only 13% of those surveyed felt that way.  Also interesting that 24% reported that they received high quantity, low quality leads from SEO.  In this scenario, you basically get a flood of inbound inquiries that require lots of follow-up and, unfortunately, many are not viable opportunities at all.  The big question I have on this study that was not part of the report is what was the cost per qualified opportunity?  I would love to know what the net cost was for real, viable leads when you factor in the cost of the SEO or paid search program and then man hours required to follow-up and qualify the leads.
 
Don’t get me wrong – we leverage online programs, but no longer on their own.  We’ve consistently found that for B2B, an integrated campaign consisting of on-line and off-line elements performs best and ensures that we deliver fully qualified leads that are actionable.