At KickFire, we always tout the ability to turn anonymous leads into sales leads. So in this article, we’re going to walk you step by step exactly how it’s done and how (with the right tools and processes in place) you too can make it happen!
The Lead Loop:
The Lead Loop is what we call the process of turning a website visitor into a qualified sales lead. In a perfect world, we would not need this. A visitor would come to our website, look around a bit, fill out a form, and become a lead. However, unfortunately that's not the world we live in. Today's B2B buying process in much more complicated than that. So here we have the steps we take to make the most of our website and drive as may leads as possible to our sales team.
Side note: I know this looks like a map of a very confusing subway system, but I promise it will all make sense soon.
Step 1: Visitor from Company X visits the website → Most web analytics platforms start and end here. They might tell you your website had 800 sessions or 2,000 ad impressions this month but not much more. However, we know there’s an entire world of possibility beyond this step.
Step 2: Company X is identified as “Acme Manufacturing Co.” → We always say the first step in account-based sales or marketing campaigns is the identification of target accounts. For us, this means using our proprietary IP address intelligence technology to gather firmographic data about our website visitors, such as company name, industry, revenue range, employee count, and more. This data can be used to power a variety of account-based sales and marketing activities.
Step 3: Content Personalization → Since the entire process of identifying the company and gathering firmographic data takes only a fraction of a second, we can personalize various parts of our website like welcome banners, suggested content, copy, images, and more. This allows us to deliver an enhanced user experience across our site and serve tailored messages that are more likely to resonate with our target audience.
Step 4: Visitor fills out a contact form → Some companies out there believe that once a visitor has clicked the “Contact us” button and landed on the form fill page that the deal is sealed. They believe that they can ask for whatever information they want, and the visitor will provide it because they are so invested. Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. As we discuss in our Form Abandonment article, there are a wide variety of reasons your website forms will get abandoned even once a website visitor has made it to the form page. But if the visitor fills out the form, great! This now becomes a lead for the sales team, and the selling process can start.
Step 5: Visitor leaves the site → Ok; if we’re realistic, not everyone that visits our site converts into a sales lead right away. In fact, only around 2-3% of the visitors will reach out via a contact form – we call this your Invisible Pipeline™. These are the visitors that visit your website, show buying intent but ultimately leave without reaching out. Normally, these visitors would be lost forever to the sea of competitors out there, but not with the right technology in place.
Step 6: Retargeting → This is a big step. Ad retargeting is one of the most powerful ways to get visitors back onto your website and converting into qualified sales leads. Using our KickFire for Google integration, our customers can place any website visitor into a dynamic Google retargeting campaign. Once a visitor has been added, when they search for specific keywords, our customers can programmatically adjust their bid to win those ad placements and recapture those previously lost website visitors. In addition, we use our firmographic data to build custom audiences based on our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This ensures that we spend our retargeting dollars only on qualified buyers.
Step 7: Lead scoring → A visitor’s lead score is a measure of buying intent, increased interest in our products, or how well they fit our ideal customer profile. A visitor’s lead score can be related to how many pages they viewed, content downloads, and/or the type of company that visited. The specific score a lead has to reach will be different for every company, but in general, the score to warrant a marketing outreach will be less than the score needed for a sales touch. If the visitor receives a high enough lead score, the appropriate sales rep will receive an email alert, and the account record is updated in our CRM. That way, in addition to our programmatic efforts, our sales reps can focus their time prospecting accounts that are already warmed up and engaged. Or, if neither lead score was reached, the visitor can still be placed into a retargeting campaign to drive them back to your website.
Step 8: Sales or Marketing campaign → Once a lead score has been reached for a specific account; they can be placed into either a sales or marketing campaign to drive these accounts back to your site. Knowing what company it is, their firmographic profile, and what specific product they are interested in allows our sales team to personalize their campaigns to the specific buyer’s needs. Again, these will be different for every company, but if the campaign is successful and the visitor converts from one of these campaigns, great! If not, they can be placed into another long term campaign or placed into a retargeting campaign (or both).
Step 9: Sales lead → HURRAY! This is what we’ve been waiting for – the once anonymous website visitor has taken the leap and filled out a contact us form from a marketing campaign, personalized sales outreach, retargeting ad, or from the site itself. The lead is now passed onto the sales team and the sales cycle can begin.
Well, there you have it, that’s the blueprint that we follow to take an anonymous website visitor and turn them into a warm sales lead. One side note is that this process doesn’t happen overnight – it does require some initial elbow grease and dedication to get started, but once it’s up and running, it can turn your website and digital ads into an ABM powerhouse and lead generating machine!
If you want to learn more about KickFire’s suite of solutions that can help you to turn anonymous website visitors into warm sales leads, contact us to set up a free trial today!