How do you gather data from your target market? Do you ask them to fill out forms? Do you send out email subscriptions? Do you conduct phone surveys? Do you draw together prospects in social media pages?
Whatever approach you have in lead generation, it’s important to understand the subtle art of collection information from your audience. When is data too little or too much?
There can be several repercussions to forcing people to divulge so many bits of information before they could appreciate your marketing message. Marketers need to determine the definition of “sufficient” data in order for them to stop wasting time on information they don’t really need.
But how?
Consider these several factors:
- The basic data requirements for a good lead are: name, job title, company, and contact info (which could be in the form of phone numbers, email addresses, and/or social media profiles). Anything other than that already necessitates a sound reason to be added to the mix.
- Other lead generation marketers usually extend their forms to include ‘qualifying’ data such as company size, industry type, and annual income. If you look at it, the first two are “Google-able” pieces of information, and annual income is something that prospects don’t really like to divulge.
- Although these extra data could definitely offer more insight on how suited a company is to be offered your product or service, think of the hassle on the part of the prospect. Those could mean 3 extra fields on your blog sign-up form or website appointment scheduler.
- Now, what marketers do is to make this additional information as ‘optional’ – meaning, prospects can still submit forms even these fields are left blank. This may look like a sound plan on the surface, but not quite. You see, even if these fields are not mandatory, there would still be 3 fields that make the form seem lengthy. That alone could cause a negative effect on the prospects’ willingness to fill them out.
- Here’s how you can approach it: First, ask yourself if your lead qualification process involves a strict ruling out of leads based on these additional information such as company size, industry and income. If not, you can remove them from your forms and leave the discovery part to your lead nurturing team.
- However, if the nature of your business is heavily based on reaching out to buyers that belong to a particular sector or to those that belong to a specific budget range, then that’s the time you would consider including extra ‘qualifiers’.
Originally appeared at ITSalesLeads Marketing Blog.
