Improve Your Performance Marketing By Improving Your Lead Distribution

The following article has been reposted here, having first appeared on PerformanceIn

When it comes to performance marketing, many make the mistake of front-loading their process, focusing primarily upon lead generation and boosting performance only at the start of the pipeline. One area which is often overlooked - and which offers a rich vein of potential improvement for all companies and performance marketers - comes at the back end of your process. In short, is your lead distribution up to scratch? Can you improve it?

An online study revealed that calling a web lead within 5 minutes increases the likelihood of conversion by 9! With such huge benefits in acting quickly, how can you ensure your leads are contacted within this golden five-minute window? How can you ensure leads are automatically sent out to a sales team - or even team member - most likely to convert? How can you get the very most out of every single lead you generate, and consequently improve performance at every stage of your pipeline?

As a performance marketer, this is also one of the easiest ways to add value to your leads/traffic. If you can deliver better leads to your client, more efficiently, then you can demand more in return: Simply put, to add value to your work as a performance marketer you must optimise your process at every step.

How does lead distribution work?

An effective Lead Distribution solution allows a business - or a performance marketer - to get leads to a sales team as quickly as possible. It is essentially the final stage of a sales funnel and can be done in a variety of ways, both manually and automatically, with a range of options as to how the process is carried out for maximum efficiency and optimal results.

Tips for getting the most out of your lead distribution

1. Automate everything

In should come as no surprise, given speed is key to optimising results, that automating your process is an incredibly simple and effective way of improving your lead distribution. With that said, many performance marketers are still forwarding their leads our manually. This is incredibly inefficient, hazardous and an unequivocal waste of their time. Indeed, the most incredible lead generation can be absolutely undone by mismanagement and complacent distribution.

In this day and age, most processes can and should be effectively automated to reduce your manual workload. This is a simple problem with a simple solution and a wonderful outcome: you’re required to do less and have more free time to focus on the things that really matter!

Using a system to automate the process of lead distribution is a surefire way of improving performance, ensuring your leads are given the very best chance of converting, removing human error and removing the manual workload required.

2. Combine with a one-system approach

We recently posted an article called: Why B2C Marketers Should Embrace All-In-One Systems that looked - in an overall sense - at the benefits of using an all-in-one system. When it comes to lead distribution, this idea can be backed up in a more granular sense. By combining your lead distribution with a one-system approach you can massively improve the speed in which you operate, the efficiency and intelligence of your distribution, the security and handling of your data, and the tracking of every lead at every step, simply and smartly.

You may be sending leads out via API already, but if you are having to license another system to do it, or set up a complex routing system to streamline your process, combining your lead distribution with an all in one system may be the most efficient and expedient way forward.

3. Machine-Learning can hugely elevate performance

One amazing and practical use of machine learning can be applied directly to lead distribution in the simplest of ways. The key to this involves “lead- scoring” ultimately using machine-learning intelligence to rank a lead, in real-time, and apply it to the perfect sales team member. This can be done in a number of ways:

Say you have an amazing lead that has the potential to generate huge revenue, you want to make sure this ends up being directed to one of your best agents and not the office rookie, right? With machine learning, this is easy to do. The idea of “best” is subjective. When it comes to lead distribution you can even use machine-learning to counter this. You can ensure that each lead is given to the member of a sales team most likely to convert. You can analyse previous data to work out which lead, based on any number of previously established factors, will give you the most chance of converting. All of this can be done, in real-time, and sent out instantly.

A few key benefits of a lead distribution system

1- Speed: it keeps coming back to this! By using an automated real-time lead distribution system - as opposed to manually sending out leads - you can exploit the benefits of the 5 golden minutes and increase your conversions by nine times, straight off.

2- Reporting becomes easier: it is far easier, especially when the process is used as part of an all-in-one approach, to track everything and accurately assess results. You can work out which sales members are getting the best results from which leads and easily make improvements at every step of the pipeline.

3- Remove fraud: lead fraud can be a huge problem but using a lead distribution system - especially with an all-in-one system - is a great way to massively remove this fraud. Not only are their fewer entry points for fraudulent leads to be pushed through, but you can also quickly identify and eliminate the points where fraudulent leads are being picked up through the aforementioned improvements in tracking and transparency.

4- Remove manual errors: the chance of missing out on leads or assigning the same leads to multiple people is completely eliminated with a lead distribution system.

5- Accurate revenue attribution: very simply remove confusion as to which lead source has led to most revenue. React to this, refine performance moving forwards.

6- Make the most of your leads: not only are you getting the most from your leads in terms of tapping into the increased chance of conversion brought on by speed, but you can also get the most from your sales team in terms of knowing which team member is most likely to convert which lead.

7- Keep your compliance watertight: using a reliable lead distribution system is one of the simplest ways of keeping your leads secure. Sending leads out without the benefit of strong distribution software can leave traces of a leads’ details on URLs and poses other security risks that can be swiftly eradicated with the correct software.

There are many more benefits to using an effective lead distribution system. At the very least, it is vital to monitor - and try and refine - performance at every stage of the sales funnel.

As a performance marketer, selling this idea to your clients - as well as faster, better leads - will massively increase your value and the value of your product.

For an additional look at the importance of lead distribution, see: Everything You Need To Know About Lead Distribution