Balancing Lead Quality and Quantity: Strategies for Scaling Demand Generation Success
Scale Demand Generation Success

It’s 2024, and almost 60% of B2B marketers cite quality lead generation as one of their key roadblocks in demand generation.

Considering this startling stats, if there was ever a time to conjoin the proverbial GTM twins, i.e., marketing and sales, then it is today!

B2B Buyers and their journeys are evolving faster than a business can roll out a campaign. Moving in and out of their buying journeys, B2B customers are continuously researching, evaluating, and sifting through tons of terabytes of freely available information without ever speaking to a sales rep. The challenge is no longer to capture their attention, but it is to break them from their monotonous, endless scroll game. From blogs to podcasts to YouTube shorts and reels, B2B marketing is adapting quickly to serve information within the 280-word limit. But does this concept of 'attention marketing' work any longer? The answer is no, it does not.

Customer are already engaged within the echo chambers of their algorithmically manipulated information cocoon. What marketers today need is to interrupt their attention span long enough for them to actually notice their products/services and value propositions. In such a dynamic, low-margin game, maintaining a steady balance between lead quantity and quality is crucial to grabbing the win.

The quality mindset- A team game!

Shifting away from lead quantity mindset to a quality mandate is kind of philosophical change in the mindset that requires a big commitment on the part of the marketing and sales leaders. However, the advent of AI-based signal tracking, deanonymizing visitors, revenue attribution, and personalization now allows B2B demand generation leaders to identify in-market accounts and direct their campaigns and resources to engage and nurture their buying ecosystem for conversions. But the challenge remains in the right implementation of tech stacks and sales intelligence along with a unified GTM and sales motions.

It is crucial to note that while ABM leads to a 25% increase in sales-qualified leads, 35% of B2B marketers still state that the pressure to prioritize quick wins over long-term investment is a big issue. Businesses need to commit to strategies that are more likely to help them strike the right balance between lead quality and quantity.

Identifying key metrics: Assigning value to your marketing dollars!

When it comes to B2B lead generation, the key metrics should not be calculating the volume of your marketing pipeline but looking at the total appointments booked, deals created, and won value. In the enterprise space, GTM teams must now pivot from marketing-qualified leads to marketing-qualified accounts. The B2B demand generation team now needs to understand how enterprises make a purchase. It is never an individual that makes a purchase rather it is the buying decision-making ecosystem that votes on any new investment. There should be a well-aligned process for measuring and building triggers for what creates marketing-qualified accounts.

It has long been debunked that B2B buying journey is not linear in that the trickle effect from one point to another is not always on the obvious parameters. Organizations, very often, coalesce around a decision after comparing solutions from multiple vendors, collating multiple thought processes at each hierarchy, and calculating cost-benefit analysis both in long-term and short-term.

Back in the day, B2B marketing needed a nail to hang the hat on in terms of value. This is when we started looking at Marketing-Qualified leads in a sort of linear apple-falling-on-the-head scenario. However, that doesn't stand true in today's B2B demand generation landscape. Good marketing is always about deep partnership with sales, in that it is critical to establish intel sharing between marketing and sales. Whether it is at the MQL level, which is more of a transactional engine, or whether it is at the MQA (marketing-qualified accounts), a frictionless partnership with sales has always been a critical value driver. A good sales engine understands the different notions of buying groups and different influencers- something that marketing can replicate to drive the scale of growth and demand in the business.

Checklist to maximize lead quality

Generating high-quality B2B sales leads requires more concentrated effort and resources. To ensure lead quality, here's a brief checklist for the B2B marketing teams that they can follow before handing them over to sales:

The right target market fit: Ensure that the accounts fit your target addressable market. They must adhere to your ideal account size, industry, location, revenue, and more.

Fit the right persona: Ensure that the prospects belong to the right buyer profiles. They must belong to the right decision-making team, must have authority, budget, and influence in the organization.

Exhibit the right intent: Ensure that they are looking for solutions like yours.

How do you strike a balance between lead quality and lead quantity?

Let's look at some of the steps that B2B demand generation leaders can take to grow their pipeline velocity, enhance quality, and accelerate conversions:

1. Identifying the right fit accounts

This is the first step in the process of every sales and GTM motion. However, identifying the right fit audience for your lead generation campaigns is not as straightforward. Moving beyond generic technographic and firmographic information, marketers must also leverage AI-powered sales intelligence on their targeted list of accounts. Insights such as funding rounds, M&A updates, new technology, sales and marketing initiatives, and digital transformation updates now play a key role in determining the fitment of accounts.

2. Uncovering the buying units, not personas

As buying behaviours evolve, B2B marketers and sales teams must understand that their campaigns and messaging are catering to the information needs of multiple individuals within the same buying unit. It is, therefore, important not to focus only on one individual filling out your form. Work around the prospect's team leveraging accurate B2B contact data services that can help you with organogram, buying hierarchies, contact details, and direct dials of key influencers.

Once you have visibility on the entire buying unit, you can more precisely tailor your outreach to suit individual preferences. Using this process, you can easily filter the most relevant stakeholders who might be interested in your products/services, thus making your lead generation more qualitative and targeted. Use lead scoring to map out the engagement levels of different personas in a buying unit with your brand to understand where they are in their buying cycle and whom to prioritize for faster conversion.

3. Creating scalable ABM

Account-based marketing has historically been a resource-intensive tactic. However, with smart leverages like GenAI, automation, and sales intelligence solutions, enterprises can easily scale their account-based marketing from 1:1 to 1:many with the same precision and personalization.

To achieve this, a tiered ABM strategy must be considered. Work with B2B sales intelligence providers to build a repository of updated account and buyer intelligence. Next, leverage GenAI tools to build contextually aware, personalized campaigns that resonate with their pain points, use cases, and buying preferences. Use predictive intent scoring to capture prospects in their buying window. Based on all these data points, map out their buying propensity and hand it over to the sales for further nurturing and conversion.

4. Creating multi-threaded engagements What can B2B sales leaders do when 43% of buyers expect rep-free experiences? Moreover, modern B2B buyers spend only 24% of their buying time meeting with all the potential vendors and continuously rely on digital channels even while speaking to a rep. They jump in and out of their buying journey. To add to the complexity, an average B2B buying group consists of 11 members influencing buying decisions.

Fortunately, B2B demand generation leaders can now leverage a suite of digital assets, B2B company and contact database, and interconnected processes that prove handy in deploying multi-threaded engagements. Multi-threaded engagements aim to engage prospects in how, when, and where they choose. The traditional approach of engaging with a single point of contact within a buying group is no longer sufficient. Today's buyers expect a more dynamic and personalized experience. Imagine seamlessly reaching each buyer with contextualized support tailored to their specific needs. This ensures consistent messaging across touchpoints while respecting each member's self-directed buying journey.

5. Enforcing sales & marketing alignment

The success of any lead generation strategy hinges on seamless collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that define lead qualification criteria and handoff procedures. Foster open communication channels, encouraging continuous feedback on lead quality and buyer needs. This alignment ensures marketing generates leads that are truly sales-ready, optimizing conversion rates for both teams.

Conclusion

It's 2024 and the pipeline strategies for businesses should now focus on balancing the quality versus quantity to drive meaningful engagements and close high-value deals. While, there is a mandate for marketing to fill the sales funnel, the goal should be to fill it with HIRO prospects. B2B sales intelligence, GenAI, personalization, and automation are the four pillars of lead generation and marketers must accelerate their readiness to deploy these smart leverages across the entire sales journey.

Check how Denave can help you drive full-growth with AI-powered B2B Demand Generation Solutions.