Why SMEs Should Focus On Warm Leads?

So you have a business website and you are producing great content to start ranking higher on Google. You are receiving a lot of traffic to your website. This is good, except for the fact that these visits are not resulting in an increase in sales. What went wrong? Bringing in traffic to your website is only one of the steps to boost your conversions and generate more sales.

Unfortunately, one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is that SMEs feel that generating traffic and leads is their biggest concern. According to Hubspot, 65% of businesses state this as their main marketing obstacle.

Thus, the nature of this challenge has recently changed. Nowadays, there are more touchpoints between brands and consumers than ever. Companies have a wide range of platforms and devices that can be used for improving their brand awareness. Each of them can provide an opportunity to find and select the kind of leads they find relevant.

As an SMEs owner, until now you are probably aware that if you want to generate leads, you need to precisely identify your target and build interest for your solution as well.

What exactly should you do to convert your traffic into warm leads?

In the modern age, due to online marketing and data openness, there are many options for generating new sales leads.

Nowadays, an effective business strategy means that potential customers are already aware of your business. They only need a little nurturing to convert into customers.

Welcome to the world of warm leads. Recently, business experts from the Search Engine Journal conducted research on warm leads versus cold ones. Their discovery was remarkable.

The conclusion was: warm leads have a 14.6% conversion rate compared to 1.7% for cold leads. This exactly points out why yous should focus on warm leads.

Why warm leads are better for your business?

Let’s put it this way: Will you be comfortable if someone tried to sell you something within the first five minutes of knowing you? Of course not!

The same natural human reaction applies to your customers as well. They hate it when a random company tries to push a product/service on them. As a result, they are more likely to walk away, or even worse — to remember your company in a negative light.

People in your marketing and sales department probably are already aware that reaching sales leads with cold calling can be a frustrating task. Doing cold calls can be a lot of wasted time on prospects who have given no thought to your offering (and probably never will).

Furthermore, attracting visitors to your website is just the beginning of warming them up. 99% of consumers who visit your website are not ready to buy yet, as reported by Marketo. You will miss out on a wealth of business if you don’t have a solid strategy to nurture leads while they experience their consumer journey.

At this point, you probably know that warm leads are already better prospects. Involving them in your strategy will make people familiar with your service and unique selling points.

On one hand, cold leads are usually taken by surprise so it is expected that they will often turn negative. On the other hand, warm leads are created as a result of a pre-existing relationship with the potential customer and their expression of interest.

This makes it a lot easier to approach a potential sale. As a result, it places warm leads on top of cold leads in the sales cycle. Obviously, warm leads will turn out in more effective sales talk.

As a result, the whole sales dynamic becomes easier and more successful. In other words, this means — higher conversion rates and less time wasted on developing an interest in your product or service from scratch.

Businesses, especially small and medium ones, rely on warm leads. This helps them to establish a level of trust with possible clients until the moment when they will be ready to buy their product/service.

Building trust is considered to be an integral part of the sales process. The warmer the lead is, the higher the chances are that the person will convert.

So, is it worth to invest in warm leads?

Absolutely! Thus, the more the leads are exposed to the name and message of the brand, the more they begin to develop trust in your brand over time. Even the numbers from a report by FitSmallBusiness confirm that consistent branding increases revenues by up to 23%.

As a result, according to Inc.com, 59% of consumers prefer to purchase from companies that are already familiar with. Thys, the more people recognize your solution and believe in your brand, the more likely they are to buy from you.

An efficient business strategy includes investing marketing and sales efforts on warm leads, instead of cold ones. For example, you might have a hundred cold leads in your CRM. However, compared to them, ten warm leads are always a better use of your time and money.

A person who is already familiar with your brand name and company mission will be easier to purchase your solution, rather than people with phone numbers who have never heard of you.

So how to generate more warm leads?

Many companies have the practice to buy b2b lists of email addresses and phone numbers. But here is the trap — this cold approach can be less effective than building and nurturing existing relationships with potential future customers. Clearly, this process can be time-consuming, and it is better to spend your time and money elsewhere.

While some salespeople may enjoy the challenge of turning a cold lead into a warm one, for many of them hunting leads is not their favorite part of the job.

So what is the alternative?

Last, but not least, you can always rely on Warm Leads professionals like BizzBee Solutions. Let us make sure you are not missing out on any warm prospect opportunities.

This article was originally published on BizzBee Blog.