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B2B Lead Generation Guide: Quality vs. Quantity

By: Jack Clark

Lead generation is the end-all, be-all of modern marketing. But lead quality can vary greatly. While it may be appealing to go after the largest quantity of leads possible, there’s greater value in concentrating on targeted lead generation. Ideally, the leads you generate should match your buyer personas, ensuring these individuals have the ability and authority to make a purchase.

While there’s certainly value in collecting a higher quantity of leads than none at all, finding the ideal balance of quantity and quality leads will ensure you’re increasing your ROI. To get quality leads, use the tips in this blog, starting by defining what a quality lead looks like to your marketing and sales teams.

🎯 Defining a Quality Lead

Quality leads are individuals who won’t just benefit from your product or service but also have the means and authority to make a purchase. In B2B marketing, this lead is typically a “decision maker” or executive in a company who makes big purchasing decisions on the business’s behalf.

Defining a quality lead involves identifying the attributes of a target-market company, including revenue, size, location, needs, and industry. Then, identify who at those companies you want to engage with and what their needs as a potential customer entail. This means capturing their roles, titles, budget, authority, needs, and timeline. To get quality leads, focus your marketing dollars on companies and personas that match your outlined attributes.

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🌟 The Benefits of Higher Lead Quantity

There are certainly benefits to collecting a large amount of less targeted leads, especially in early marketing instances where you’ll likely still be figuring out who your target market is, how to define your buyer personas, and how to get that lead.

When you’re gathering many leads in this manner and learning about your leads’ demographics, you can sharpen your focus for your next campaign to get quality leads from a more specified audience. As your marketing experience grows, so will your knowledge of what does and doesn’t work.

While marketing is notorious for focusing on higher lead generation, the most adept marketers know that finding the balance between lead quality and quantity is the most effective method for increasing conversions and sales.

Let’s explore the pros and cons of quantity leads and quality leads to understand their differences and similarities.

👍🏼 Pros of Higher Lead Quantity

  • Less expensive
  • Easier and quicker to generate
  • More data to interpret
  • Increases brand awareness

👎🏼 Cons of Higher Lead Quantity:

  • Less suited for B2B sales
  • Less likely to be buyers
  • Hard to sift through
  • Lowers ROI

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👍🏼 Pros of Higher Quality Leads:

  • More likely to buy
  • Allows for lead nurturing
  • Optimizes resource allocation
  • Increases ROI

👎🏼 Cons of Higher Quality Leads:

  • More expensive
  • Requires historical data
  • More complex to initiate
  • Risky if unsuccessful

🔎 Finding Balance to Get Quality Leads

Quality lead generation should always be your company’s marketing goal. To do this most efficiently, you’ll need to find harmony in quality and high-quantity lead generation to get quality leads in healthy amounts.

Utilize large quantity lead generation early in your business or marketing efforts. Take the data gathered from the widespread, less-targeted lead collection and refine your marketing demographics, channels, and paid opportunities to aim for a high number of generated leads but from a more focused group.

Analytics data is a marketer’s best friend, and a higher quantity of leads creates more data for you to analyze, interpret, and utilize. There’s no clear-cut method for finding the ideal balance between quantity and quality but doing what works best for your company through testing and trial and error will always be the most intelligent answer.

Here are our tips for generating the most significant quantity of high-quality leads:

📈 Tips for High-Quality Lead Generation in High Quantities

To help you find the most effective strategy that balances high-quality lead generation without compromising lead quantity, here are some suggestions:

  1. Create a Lead Generation Roadmap
  2. Gather, Analyze, and Understand Lead Data
  3. Establish Up-to-Date and Clear Buyer Personas
  4. Utilize Account Based Marketing (ABM)
  5. Leverage Data When Creating Diverse Content
  6. Use Multiple Channels for Lead Generation
  7. Nurture High Quality Leads to Conversions
  8. Repeat, but Better

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📞 Is Your Lead-Gen Flatlining? Call In the Experts

If your B2B lead generation efforts are flatlining, or even if you just want a boost in your strategy—the experts at Sagefrog are here to help. We’re dedicated B2B marketers who have accelerated success for B2B customers through quality lead generation for over two decades. Through integrated marketing, we leverage every tool in the marketing toolbox to reach your target market and convert them into leads.

Get that lead with Sagefrog on your team. Contact us today!