Businesses, including law firms, are constantly looking for ways to grow their lead count and conversions. But the general increase of information available through different forms of online marketing makes lead quality an even more critical aspect.
Smart attorneys and lead generation companies specializing in leads for attorneys have already shifted and are focusing more on lead quality over quantity.
Although salespeople are data scientists, most of them haven’t always had the data required to understand customer intent the way they should.
In fact, the availability of precise data that allows a marketer to understand a potential client on an incredibly detailed level is crucial to establishing cordial relationships and converting leads into high-paying clients.
With the right data, your marketing and sales team will know exactly what they want and when they need it to convert leads into clients.
In simple words, qualifying leads for attorneys helps your team know what your leads are looking for and whether or not your business can meet their needs. Typically, law firms with an excellent system for generating and qualifying leads can guarantee success even if you have a flawed sales process.
While qualifying leads may quite challenging, it saves a significant amount of time in the long run and results in a relatively high conversion rate. But to understand how to measure lead quality, we need first to define the term “lead quality.”
What Is Lead Quality?
In simple terms, lead quality allows you to identify how likely target prospects are to become your valuable high-paying clients. Generally, your prospect will most likely become your client if the quality of your lead is high and vice versa.
However, you need to keep in mind that accurate lead quality measurement may vary depending on your lead generation strategy and the services you offer.
Some of the few methods you can use to establish whether a lead is right for your business include monitoring those who download your lead magnet and visitor who contact your marketing/sales team to ask questions.
If you run an eCommerce store, you should pay close attention to those who browse through specific product pages or the pricing page because they could be thinking of doing business with you.
Lead Quality vs. Lead Quantity
Before we proceed, it is good to highlight the difference between lead quantity and lead quality. A few years ago, lead companies were focused more on lead quantity, but that is no longer the case.
Lead quantity simply refers to the number of leads your business receives within a specific period, while lead quality tends to focus more on the probability of the prospects converting into high-paying clients.
According to a recent survey conducted by LinkedIn, the primary focus for most businesses right now is to improve their lead quality to boost their revenue and return on investment. Most of them aren’t bothered by lead quantity so much.
For instance, legal lead generation companies specializing in generating leads for attorneys are now under pressure to generate highly exclusive leads for their clients. Most of them have been forced to reinvent their strategies to meet this expectation.
Lead Quality from Different Lead Sources
Before you measure lead quality, you should consider the primary source of your leads. If you are dealing with direct mail leads from direct mail or email marketing, there is a possibility you did some list research before you executed your marketing campaign.
It means that a majority of the leads should have been pre-qualified for revenue, need, budget, and authority. A response is most likely confirmation of interest.
Online marketing leads mostly come from inbound marketing campaigns such as search, content marketing, and even blogging. Although these leads are appealing because of their relatively low cost, their lead quality score can be pretty low.
This is because you have no control over who visits your site. So, you don’t know anything about them. All you know is they visited your site or landing page and were convinced to give you their contact information.
Lastly, you should think about traditional media leads that aren’t just unique to your online marketing effort. Like online marketing leads, you can’t control who sees or responds to your TV, radio, or print ads.
Remember that highlighting the different lead sources isn’t meant to serve as an argument for one source over the other. After all, if one source provides greater lead quality, chances are the cost per lead may also be significantly higher.
Different Lead Qualifying Techniques
Once you have gathered all the useful information you need on a lead, you have to figure out what to do with the information. You need to prioritize your leads and find an excellent system to keep everything organized.
The lead qualifying techniques we are about to discuss don’t serve as an organization system but a simple way to get you started. You still need to find a good system that works for your business.
Here are the three most common lead qualifying techniques:
1. Lead bucketing
The most common method marketers use to qualify leads is to drop them in a bucket. Dropping into a bucket means labeling each lead as either hot, warm, or cold. This is not a system of organizing leads but a simple way of getting things started.
2. Lead scoring
Lead scoring is a popular lead qualification method that attaches numerical values to each lead on a scale of one to three. The overall lead score determines how relevant it is to your business.
The common categories used in lead scoring are budget, need, interest, revenue, timetable, and authority. It means the highest score on the ranking is 6*3=18, while the lowest score is 6*1=6.
When developing your scoring model, you may also give more weight to one or more categories.
3. Lead mapping
Lead mapping uses the same categories described in lead scoring, but instead of assigning numerical values, all leads are placed in appropriate steps of a comprehensive sales process.
Some of the steps you can include in your sales process include inquiry, lead, qualified lead, sales engaged lead, sales-ready lead, trial customer, customer, returning customer.
As you collect information about the leads for attorneys, you can categorize each of them along the sales process.
Leads for Attorneys: Measuring the Lead Quality
Lead quality measurement techniques vary depending on the product or service you offer, but there are some broad measurement methods that can help determine whether a prospect is right for you or not.
The first thing you need to do is track and record all inbound leads. You can track this information via incoming phone calls or website forms.
Prospective clients who fill out forms on your site either to download a lead magnet or contact your business will provide you with their contact information. Take time to sort out all form entries into three categories: leads, existing clients, and spam.
For inbound calls, you can sort them out into leads, voicemail, hang-ups, no answer, existing clients, and spam.
We have purposefully included spam for both form fills and phone calls because tracking spam makes it relatively easier to re-focus your online marketing efforts and weed out some things that attract spam.
Your online marketing campaigns must be designed to stay at the top of the sales funnel because your existing clients can help you close a deal with the prospects. Tracking lead quality at every stage of your campaigns will help you reach more potential clients based on your data.
Other forms of measuring lead quality include tracking downloads (with or without form), longer transaction timelines with more than one step, and offline connections such as direct mail campaigns.
Attracting quality leads involves a lot of work, but it is worth it. Partnering with a lead generation company that focuses on lead quality other than lead quantity can take a lot of work off your hands while still providing you with a wide range of benefits.
PALO Prioritizes Lead Quality over Quantity
At PALO, we understand the challenges that law firms and other businesses face while attracting quality leads online. With over ten years of online advertising experience, we help our clients generate highly-qualified and exclusive leads ready to turn into high-paying clients.
Our leads are delivered in real-time through the web or live on the phone, so you can respond to them promptly. Since we are a performance-based digital marketing agency, you only pay for qualified leads we deliver to your business.
Contact us today to find out if we are a good fit. Our team is always ready to serve you and help you start finding new clients!
