There Is a Smarter Way To Generate Customers

In the latest instalment of the B2C Lead Gen Podcast we have the pleasure of welcoming Commercial Head of MVF, Josh Joyner, to look at what it takes to run lead generation for one of the largest lead gen businesses in the world!

We talk through why brands need to view high quality leads as the key to driving sales and growth, the challenges lead generators face when operating globally, and why transparency is more important than ever.

Below are some of the key ideas discussed during out Zoom, but be sure to check out the entire podcast - links at the bottom of the page - for the whole shebang!

Why do brands need to think about leads being the key to sales?

Josh Joyner: I think when you work in the industry you realise that it’s not just the verticals you touch and the clients that you worth with, but lead generation is practically everywhere. All businesses do lead generation in some form. They might not know it, but they’re doing it, otherwise they’re not going to grow.

Companies understand that their customers are all online now, no matter what industry you’re in there is always some element of online activity, and get organised around that… so they run their own campaigns, and do their own lead generation, whether that’s directing traffic to their own website or working with third parties like MVF or many of our competitors, it’s about having a comprehensive strategy that allows you to get people at all stages in the funnel. So, someone whose really diligently researched and understands a product they want to buy, maybe they will interact with your brand at that level, but there’s also a load of people who are very early on in their buying process and a third party or a white label lead generator is the perfect person to sit there and give customers what they want, which is ultimately the best deal they can get and a comparison of what opportunities are out there.

And really that’s why I think our model is so successful. Because it’s quite a hard thing to do and if you’ve got the right systems and processes it can be the number one way to scale any sales-led organisation.

But that’s the key thing. How do you take the leads and turn them into sales? It’s not enough to just be generating lists of data.

We talk about quality all the time but how do you ensure the quality of leads you are generating when operating on a large scale?

Yeah, it’s a really good question and it’s something in the time that I’ve been working in the industry it’s completely come to the forefront. I think back, even 5 years ago, it was not as prevalent or as at the forefront when we were running campaigns.

It’s been great to watch the transformation of lead generation, and in fact just listening to people on your podcast who have come on and said they’re incredibly data driven now and using different quality disposition data to drive their performances and campaign optimisation, that’s exactly what we (the industry) should be doing. It moves the industry forward.

We’re huge advocates of setting those expectations very early on in the relationship with clients. So a key thing for us is to understand is what we’re aiming for, what the outcome of the relationship is. If we don’t have that up front it’s very hard for us to enter into any long-term profitable engagement.

Dispo data, so feedback on the lead performance, is vital. You’re not gonna get it from every single client because of limitations in their tech set-up or whatever, but for all major clients we insist on having at least some disposition coverage - whether that be how leads are contacted, or booked an appointment as to whatever their target metric is - down to the real details of a complete sales funnel.

The beauty is that it’s all in-house, so the marketing we run is all generated by MVF employees so we run all the campaigns ourselves and have a really good view on what works and what doesn’t. We don’t have to rely on the black box of external providers.

We also have a really good CRO team, and I don’t think this is necessarily something that the industry is really developing - understanding the value of CRO, not just in increasing conversion rate, but also in how you add intelligent friction into the funnel. So testing alternative qualification methods, longer forms, all types of things to drive up quality.

And obviously when you have good quality disposition data you can stress test all of those techniques and tactics and pretty quickly understand how those things are working.

How involved are you with helping the clients convert the leads you are sending? To you help with that?

Oh, big time. The lead itself is only, not even half of the work I don’t think. The single biggest factor in the success of lead generation is how they deal with the leads. You can have multiple clients in one category who are dealing with the same batch of leads and they can have vastly different results.

I think a lot of it is about the culture in the sales team. It’s really important. It’s about who you’ve got in there, even in a company that’s adept at using digital leads, there will be good converters and bad converters.

Why not get the full story? Check out our entire call on Apple, Spotify or watch the video over on Databowl’s Youtube Channel.