Are your lead-generation plans not really working out? Are you not generating the sales or conversion that you expected or were promised?
A broken lead-generation campaign can more often than not be considered as a major detriment to your overall marketing strategy. As a result, it is beneficial to marketers and sales professionals to be able to identify when their campaigns are running aground and what can be possibly done to get them back on track.
Over the last number of years, AutoDeal has pioneered technology in the Philippines to help automotive brands and dealers better manage their online lead generation campaigns. As a consequence, it has enabled its partners to significantly improve their lead-to-sales conversion rates year on year.
In the process, we’ve not only helped partners generate more sales but have simultaneously enabled them to identify major pitfalls in their lead-generation strategies. Consequently, we’ve also recently expanded the AutoDeal Lead-Management System (LMS) to now accommodate digital leads from a wide variety of sources – including brand/dealer websites, social media, and real-world offline marketing events. The result? AutoDeal now plays a central role in a variety of lead-generating activities for a number of automotive brands and dealers through a new line of enterprise offerings.
So, what are some of the major mistakes to avoid when planning your lead-generation campaigns? We’ve listed three (3) of the biggest contributors to things going awry.
1. Your definition of a lead is vaguely defined
What is your definition of a lead? Are the number of leads that you’re generating over any given period of time reflecting that definition?
At AutoDeal, our interpretation of a “lead” is “data that reflects a prospective buyer with intent to purchase.” In order to define this, we put users through a variety of steps to help validate their level of purchase intent. As a general rule of thumb, the more steps involved in the lead-generation process, the higher the quality of the lead produced.
Comparatively, if your lead-generation campaign is a simple one or two click process, then you can expect the quality of leads to be much lower and the conversion rate to be significantly less. So ask yourself this question: is this really lead-data or merely an audience segment data to continue marketing to? In short, is this data ready for your sales team? If the answer is no, then you probably need to have a little rethink on the definition of your campaign.
Going back to our original question, how do you know if your lead numbers are too good to be true? The clue should be in the volume. A healthy lead-to-sale conversion should be between 5-10%, meaning that your total lead volume should be ten to twenty times higher than your gross annual sales. For example, if you’re selling 1,000 cars a year, then maybe you should be producing 10,000 to 20,000 leads a year.
2. You’re measuring only one conversion metric
Sales, sales, sales. We all want more sales. We get it.
However, if you’re only measuring the final step conversion, then you’re not implementing the best practices to maximize conversion from your overall strategy. For example – how many of your leads are actually visiting the showroom, taking a test-drive, or being approved for a car loan? How are you re-engaging with those leads who are interested but haven’t yet purchased?
The ability to Identify which leads fall into these macro-level milestones in the lead funnel will help your sales team to better initiate actionable strategies to better mind the mid-funnel. Execute well on this and your conversion will increase, as will your sales metrics.
3. You value quantity over quality
We want more leads. It’s a phrase we’ve heard over and over again. However, regardless of whatever lead-generation strategy you are deploying, you will reach a ceiling where the lead quality will begin to significantly decrease as you push for higher overall lead numbers.
While it might not seem like there’s anything wrong in generating more leads for your sales teams, you are not only running the risk of instigating fatigue but you’re distracting your sales teams from focusing on the legit high-quality leads.
Using the needle in the haystack analogy, you’re simply just adding more hay to the haystack. As a result, increased lead volumes can actually be detrimental to your overall sales strategy if you’re not attentive to measuring the macro-level conversion metrics.
If you’re looking for ways to better help your teams manage both your online and offline lead-generation strategies, you’ll be happy to know that AutoDeal Enterprise now offers technology and services specifically tailored for automotive brands and dealers in the Philippines.
Services include third party lead management technology to help manage brand/dealer website leads and social media leads, event analytics to help manage leads from your roadshows and real-world marketing events, and a contact center solution to help sales teams to re-engage with historic leads and better manage them mid-funnel.
For more information, you can contact sales@autodeal.com.ph.
