Lead management is what links marketing and sales together for a company. It can identify potential buyers, educate them, engage with them and when leads are considered qualified, pass them from marketing to sales. You need to ask yourself if your business is following an organized and effective lead management process because doing so can improve the results of your lead generation efforts and will contribute to more sales.

According to CSO Insights’ 2014 Sales Performance Optimization Find More Analysis Report, only about half of organizations have a structured definition of a qualified lead that both Marketing/Sales adhere to. 31% of the respondents had an informal definition and 19% had no definition at all. Research has shown that only 34% of companies that didn’t have a formal definition were able to advance a lead to a first discussion more than half the time. When companies had a clear version of this definition, the percentage then jumped to 63%. This concludes that organizations connect with more prospects when they have a clear definition of what counts as a qualified lead. RuthStevens.com advises that the best way to develop qualification questions is to set the criteria with the sales team. It is ideal to have them describe their prospect so then you can get a clear understanding of the categories that will be the most productive and determine what would fit their needs.

When wanting to create an effective lead qualification campaign, it all starts with the content. You need to have compelling content which would generate traffic from tools that you use such as blogs, SEO, PPC and social platforms. HubSpot researched that marketers reported that demand for content creation increased by 70.94% in 2013 and has continued since then. Companies that are implementing content are generating 67% more leads a month than those who don’t.

One way to create an effective lead campaign is by lead capture. If you don’t capture some information about your visitors then most likely they won’t return to your site. A working email address is the best item that a marketer can ask for, but not all visitors are willing to give out this information. Email marketing can then be utilized as it is one of the few online marketing channels that has stood the test of time. One of the biggest trends in email marketing at the moment is marketing automation and it has generated great results for many B2B businesses. Marketing automation tools are hybrid email marketing tools that connect with your CRM and enable you to automatically send highly targeted emails to leads that are specifically personalized to them. While traditional newsletters and email marketing are still important, being able to capture more user data and use behavioral tactics has enabled B2B marketers to get smarter with how they target users in the inbox.

Another way to create an effective lead qualification campaign would be with lead magnets. These are tools that provide value for your visitors in exchange for their contact information. Businesses use lead magnets such as email opt-ins, subscriptions, and social media to reel in some sign of interest from their site visitors. The goal of this is to receive permission from visitors to follow up. Lead magnets include: Training video series, free trials, Webinars, eBooks, White Papers, bonus tips and expert interviews. Qualification journeys are known to be involved with inbound inquiries such as filing out the “download white paper” and give the prospect an opportunity to seek further information. According to Autopilot, studies have shown that prospective buyers may complete 60-70% of their research prior to speaking with sales. You don’t want to engage too early and risk driving away a buyer, but then you don’t want to wait too long and miss your chance. You want to identify your buyers and deliver a specific call-to-action. This could be from Requesting a Demo to lead scoring software that pulls up leads based on recent web activity, demographics or content engagement.

Founded in 1990, Winn Technology Group is the leading provider of global, multi-channel marketing solutions for the technology industry. For both direct and channel sales, Winn supports demand creation, account-based marketing, channel management, digital marketing, social media, teleprospecting, lead nurturing, event marketing, database services and inbound response management.