There was a day when lead gen was largely regarded to be a numbers game. It was all about trying to get as many chances at-bat possible, and sales would follow through sheer force of odds.
The game has changed. Now lead quality is king.
Any savvy business owner will tell you that they’ll take 10 qualified, serious prospects over 50 mediocre ones.
Lead validation is the process that is used to measure your lead quality, identifying qualified, serious prospects– and it’s crucial that your company has a procedure in place for it. Here’s why.
Legal Protection
If you’re doing any sort of automated outbound marketing by phone or text message, you’re subject to be compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
This essentially means that it’s your legal responsibility to be sure that all of your contacts are up-to-date and that they have explicitly given you permission to call or text them with your marketing efforts.
It’s crucial that you have validated, archived proof of consent to stay compliant with the TCPA, or they can slap you with a fine of up to $1,500 per call for violation. That’s a high price to pay for one ill-placed phone call.
We’ve all had customers who have opted in but have forgotten about it, and swear it never happened. Proof of consent will be critical to prove that you’re following all TCPA guidelines if anyone hurls this sort of accusation at you or your company.
Brand Protection
There’s really nothing stopping some rando on the internet from starting a website that’s identical to yours, using your logo and your name.
This takes on many forms, from outright counterfeiters to folks who are just hijacking your copyrighted materials, color mark and/or overall trade dress.
This is harmful for a few reasons, but loss of revenue is only the tip of the iceberg. If you become a victim of someone infringing on your brand it can be severely damaging to your reputation and company’s image.
It’s important that if this does occur, that you’re ready and able to protect your brand.
Lead validation helps you verify your company is represented accurately and leads are coming from accepted sites.
Increase Sales Efficiency
There are few things a sales rep hates more than a bogus lead. Not only is it a waste of their time, but they can’t make a commission off of a weak prospect.
Marketing and sales need to work cohesively, and unless legitimate prospects are coming through your marketing channels, your sales team doesn’t have a fighting chance.
By using a lead validation process, you’ll ensure that your sales team is spending time on real people with legitimate marketing inquiries.
By providing your team with true sales leads you’re increasing their chances of closing the sale drastically, which will raise your profits overall. Everybody wins.
Improve Your Marketing
By validating your leads, you’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing in a way that would be impossible otherwise.
Experienced online marketers will tell you that lead generation varies from platform to platform, and data points will prove that SEO, PPC, and display advertising all yield different types of leads (and tend to have different conversion rates).
By monitoring your sales team’s closing rate of your validated leads generated by internet marketing campaigns, you can see which lead source has the highest return on investment for you.
Lead validation is especially important for campaigns using any sort of marketing automation. If the wrong kind of lead comes through and doesn’t have to pass validation, it’s going to give the wrong signals to the algorithm of the ad campaign.
If this happens too often, the algorithm is thrown off completely and sends an increasing amount of the wrong type of traffic, and you’ll be footing the bill.
The Lead Validation Process You Need: Validiform
Validiform is a cutting-edge lead certification software that tracks a user’s experience on your website and captures a video when they fill out a web form.
Validiform works in real-time on all of your form submissions, and each video is then stored on our secure servers, available for you to replay anytime.
Not only is Validiform the leading software of its kind, but it’s also much less expensive than other leading brands that aren’t as user-friendly and reliable. Your lead validation process is crucial to your continued success.
Try Validiform today by scheduling a consultation. Take the first step toward building your lead validation process.