Unlocking the Secrets to Boosting Lead Sales: Tips for Lead Suppliers Maximising Lead Sales: Essential Strategies and Tools for Efficient Lead Management and Revenue Optimisation with LeadByte
Lead buying has its challenges, especially if you are acquiring leads from lead sellers as part of your growth plans. We have recently interviewed 9 clients using our software that have agreed for us to share what they say to help you scale lead buying in confidence. Combined, these clients are spending £3m+ p/month on acquiring leads from lead sellers outside of their own media buying activity direct from paid search or social.Although we strongly advise you to invest in your own mediabuying, done right, acquiring leads from lead sellers canFast-Track your growth plans significantly quicker (especially if you are only invested in media buying from one specific network e.g. Meta).
Make sure you know who you are buying from and understand exactly how leads are generated. Speak to others in the industry if they know of the lead seller and follow up on any testimonials.
Shaun says, “Other than the standard compliance checks,we created a questionnaire that any lead seller needs to complete if they want to work with us. We dig deep on validating how they generate their leads and who they have worked with previously”.
LeadByte has 000’s registered lead sellers. More often than not we can help you with the process. It is our opinion that when working with a lead seller you should have the mindset that you are in it for the long haul. Transient suppliers are often more disruptive to your business than good.
If you want to buy leads from a reliable and trustworthy source, you need to do your homework and ask the right questions. You can use a questionnaire like Shaun's to verify the quality and origin of the leads, or you can ask LeadBytefor recommendations and assistance. Remember, buying leads is not a one-time deal, but a long-term partnership that can benefit your business if done right.
Not all lead sellers provide the same quality (for various reasons). If you are already generating leads in-house, you should already have a good idea of what it costs to acquire a lead by channel (Meta, Google, etc), what your conversion rates are, and how long it takes to turn a lead into a sale. If you are buying across various channels, you should also know what channel requires more effort to nurture a sale,which can have an impact on your sales team.
Matthew says, “We know what we are willing to pay for sale and therefore offer our suppliers a CPA rate right off the bat for the first 2 weeks. It’s a way of filtering out those that are in it for a quick buck and those that are confident about the quality they can produce. After 2 weeks of trading, we have insights into the numbers and can calculate a CPL(cost-per-lead). We monitor numbers every week thereafter".
To a certain extent, every lead has a value, you just need to be sure that you pay what it is worth to your business and track performance regularly. Lead quality can vary based on various reasons, here are just some factors that you should consider (and form part of your due diligence):
È Are leads sold to me exclusively·È How many buyers would you have offered the lead to before it landed with me·È Are you incentivizing customers to submit their details·È Are you validating leads before sending them to me·È How long after a form is submitted do I get the lead·È Do you generate leads in-house or do you work with sub-suppliers?
Buying leads from external sources can be a great way to grow your business, but you need to be careful about the quality and price of the leads. You should have a clear idea of how much you are willing to pay for a lead and how well it converts into a sale. You should also ask the lead seller some important questions to ensure that the leads are genuine,exclusive, and timely. By tracking and analyzing the performance of the leads, you can adjust your strategy and budget accordingly
As a buyer, you should know what basic data points you need to collect and what the qualifying criteria are to help increase conversion rates. Lead sellers may not have the software in place to only send you your ICP (Ideal CustomerProfile); with LeadByte you can create custom filters to automatically reject leads in real-time that do not match criteria. For example, if you are selling an insurance product to over 50's you should insist on DOB being provided so you can calculate the age of the customer before you accept. Ifyou have an existing database of customers already, you can upload the list into LeadByte to dupe before you buy. It's not rocket science but can be an administrative pain unless you have a lead management tool in place.
Lindsay says, "We have been generating our leads for the last 2 years. We know what audience works well for us but also what lead types have a better chance of converting. It's not that complex (for us), we know the postcode areas that work best and the age group that is likely to make a decision. Over the last 3 months, we have rejected 15% of leads that did not match the criteria. To scale our lead buying we can't rely solely on lead sellers to only send what we want, LeadByte takes care of it".
As a buyer, you should have a clear understanding of who your ideal customer is and what data points you need to collect to qualify them. You should not rely on the lead seller to send you only the leads that match your criteria but use a lead management tool like LeadByte to filter out the leads that are irrelevant, duplicate, or low quality. By doing so, you can save time and money and increase your conversation-rates.
There's no excuse why any lead seller should not have a livephone and email validation enabled on their data captureforms. It's relatively inexpensive and it's a reliable service(subject to the country where you are acquiring leads). When buying leads you should check if this is the case, if not we would question why not. Any reputable lead seller will have validation enabled (and not just syntax).
So many of our customers came to us echoing the same issue regarding dead numbers and email addresses. Dead contact details are a drain on resources (admin) and morale for your sales team. With LeadByte you can enable phone and email validation to eliminate noncontactable leads,which in turn will increase contact rates. All of this is done in real-time
Abigail says, "Our dead number rate was as high as 45%with some lead sellers. It was such a waste of everyone's time. Our rule of thumb when launching with a new source is that we always enable phone validation even if they say they do it. It's next to nothing to run the check. With LeadByte you can do this at the supplier level if you want to be selective. More and more lead sellers are returning to the likes of Facebook's LeadAd Forms to generate leads at a more effective CPR. Quality can be shocking so be aware!".
As well as checking phone and email, LeadByte also has the UK and USA "Do Not Call list" service integrated into our validation suite. For additional compliance, you may wish to consider checking if a number is listed before you call it.
When buying leads, you should always verify if the phone and email details are valid and contactable. This can save you a lot of hassle and frustration, as well as improve your contact rates and sales performance. You can useLeadByte to enable phone and email validation in real-time, as well as check the Do Not Call list for compliance purposes. Don't trust the lead seller to do this for you, as they may not have the proper tools or incentives to ensure quality.
You want more of the good stuff, lead sellers want to get paid top dollar. Lead sellers can optimize for quality if you give them the right data such as the leads that are converted into customers (sales). Are you doing this already? Is it automated or manual?
When you make a sale you can feed this event back intoLeadByte. From LeadByte you can then push this event back to your lead seller via API or make the leads available with feedback via the portal to download.#
Nigel says, "I would question if a lead seller does not want their disposition back. Even if they are paid on a CPL,having insights into what converts (and do not) will help them optimize their ad campaigns and be able to leverage negotiating what we pay them. We introduce a commission kicker if conversion rates are 22%+".
Attributing sales back to Ad Networks is a relatively simple process and can have a big impact on results. If you generate your leads and are not doing this already, many of our clients use www.Anytrack.io to make that attribution happen!
If you want to get more quality leads from your lead sellers,you should share the feedback on which leads converted into sales with them. This can help them improve their targeting and pricing, and also create an incentive for them to deliver better results. You can use LeadByte to automate this process and integrate it with your lead seller's API or portal. You can also use AnyTrack to track the sales back to the ad networks if you generate your leads.
When you are buying leads from lead sellers, you should ask for them to provide at least one traffic source / ID against every lead as the quality can swing considerably based on where it comes from. For example, a lead seller may generate social, paid search, and native traffic so it's important to understand what channel is yielding the best results for you. Equally, if a lead seller is a broker they will be working with multiple lead sellers themselves so you need to keep on top of it.
Cameron says, “We’ve been buying leads for over 5 years so we know the game! My advice to anyone going into leadbuying is to have absolute transparency in place else don't waste your time (especially if you are working with brokers). With every lead, you need to know how it was generated. We require the following from all of our lead sellers so we can report to a basic level of granularity:- Channel (Social,Paid Search, Email, Native, Video, or Affiliate), Channel ID(Facebook, TikTok, Google, YouTube, AffID123). From this,we can see stats at a level that enables us to make quick decisions. Ultimately, all channels need to hit KPI else they are removed.”
Email marketing continues to play a big part in the world of lead generation so if you are working with a lead seller that has a network of emailers, be sure to track individual sources and understand how they collect their consent. Too many times now we have seen lead buyers get caught up in incompliance issues where their brands have been used to promote an offer that did not carry the right consent. Do your due diligence!
In conclusion, lead buying is a complex and dynamic process that requires careful monitoring and analysis. Leadbuyers should not blindly trust lead sellers, but rather ask for detailed information about how and where the leads are generated, and verify that they comply with the relevant regulations. By doing so, lead buyers can optimize their lead generation campaigns and avoid wasting time and money on low-quality or non-consenting leads.
Capping lead sellers is an easy but effective way to ensure that you are in control of your spending and lead volumes throughout the day. When working with new lead sellers we would advise that you agree from the outset the volumes you are willing to accept per time interval (hour, day, week etc). It’s a good way to stay in control of your spending, mitigate risk, and evaluate quality.
Samuel says, “We have daily caps in place for all of our lead sellers, it enables us to keep control of lead flow into our call center. Previously we dealt with lead sellers that would oversupply and cause havoc with our conversion rates. We use the hourly cap for new suppliers and for all lead sellers we only accept leads within our operating hours so that we can drive efficiency and conversions with our agents.”
Introducing caps as a buyer is important as it:
Consent-based marketing is the practice of only contacting consumers that have given their prior express written consent to be contacted. Platforms such as Contact State, Jornaya, and Active Prospect can give you more confidence and transparency when you buy leads, providing all the relevant information to know your leads are legitimate. Each Lead comes with a certified data certificate that shows the landing page, the consent, and the terms and conditions that the consumer agreed to. This has many benefits, such as recording the origin and history of the data, verifying that the consumer is real and not a bot, providing a snapshot of how the consumer was marketed to, and It helps marketing teams manage compliance oversight.
Chris says, “We’ve been using our certification software for over 2 years, it is crucial to ensure that the leads we receive are of the utmost quality. We operate in the legal space, and the leads we buy are of high value so we need to be sure they are legit. We buy leads from specific channels so we use the feature to reject if the channel is not what it should be. Furthermore, we reject leads if the time spent on the page is less than X seconds, the form has been auto-filled and an additional bot detection software treats it as suspicious.”
Real-time insights can help you understand the drivers of sales and margins with real-time performance reporting. You can use these platforms (listed below) to monitor and analyze lead flow and ensure compliance with existing regulations. This will help you to enhance your lead conversion rates, maximize your return on investment, optimize your marketing spend and strategy, and improve your profitability over time.
We would recommend the following software to certify customer journey:
https://www.contactstate.com
https://www.jornaya.com
https://activeprospect.com
Our clients that operate as lead sellers deal with various
API integrations, ranging from easy to extremely complex.
A complex API can often hinder a buyer's ability to scale.
Make sure that you keep it simple!
As you increase the number of lead sellers that you work with, you will find that technical capability will vary and so it is important to make your API accessible to one and all else you will find this to be a bottleneck to growth.
Alan says, “We migrated to LeadByte from our legacy internal platform. It was the best decision we made to fuel our growth. Although our internal software served us well for many years, it was specifically integrated into our lead forms, which caused problems when onboarding new partners. We lost out on working with several lead sellers because of this. We can now onboard a new partner in under 10 minutes!
We have been the platform of choice within the industry for over 10 years. As a lead buyer you benefit not only from a wide suite of features but we facilitate introductions to help you scale fast with quality lead sellers. To find out more about LeadByte visit our website: www.LeadByte.co.uk