Why Feedback Is The Key To Growth

This week we look at an issue many of you have requested: Feedback Loops. We want to examine why it is vitally important for lead buyers and lead sellers to be working together, openly and transparently, to benefit everyone. We look at some of the obstacles brands and lead buyers face from a technical perspective. And we examine why feedback is so important to helping the lead generator improve performance and results.

From the perspective of the lead buyer, what the benefits of giving feedback to lead generators?

Whether you are buying leads externally or internally - that is bought from a lead generator or an internal marketing team - by not feeding back the outcomes or the results that the bought leads are achieving you are missing a huge opportunity. This is a problem linked inherently to the mindset of measuring success by the leads itself, rather than the ultimate outcome: a sale. And is effectively leaving money on the table.

Lead buyers need to be feeding back which leads are good, which are bad, which leads became sales. By doing this feedback can be used to optimise performance at all stages of the funnel - that is pre and post lead - to see an absolute impact on the end result. In short, lead buyers need to educate the lead generator so they can improve their own performance, with this naturally translating to a knock-on improvement in the performance of the lead buyers.

What are the reasons lead buyers are unable or choose not to feedback?

There are multiple answers to this, but the most frequently seen are:

• There is a fear amongst lead buyers that feeding the information back to the lead seller will cause the lead seller to raise CPLs, assuming the performance is good. This is a strange idea as even if this were to happen, the increase in end performance (ie. more sales) would theoretically offset the increases in CPLs. Again, this comes down to to the problem with measuring success by lead and not by sale.

Ultimately, this kind of thinking belongs more to a pre-transparent lead gen era and is being being less and less amongst professional lead generators and smart brands and lead buyers.

• Poor technology and the difficulty of actually feeding back the information can also prevent lead buyers from being able to see the benefits of feedback loops. Oftentimes, lead buyers simply are unable to provide feedback to the lead seller in a time frame that will enable real time changes to campaigns to see a boost in performance.

This problem - the difficulty of employing tech solutions - can be solved with a lead management system like Databowl where APIs can be set up under a minute and real time feedback loops are incredibly simple to execute.

What are the benefits to the lead generator?

This is simply a case of education and the benefits actually work both ways. The more information a lead generator has about the performance of leads the more they can do to refine campaigns and optimise the leads.

In a very simplistic viewpoint, the ultimate benefit to the lead generator is that they can retain the lead buyer as a client if they are able to react to the feedback and improve performance. That is the ultimate goal of the lead seller and if improving the leads they send enables this then of course they will do all in their power to boost performance.

Again, it is worth noting that is almost pointless to examine the benefits to any individual because feedback loops and optimised lead quality will naturally be beneficial to all parties concerned. It really is the key to unlocking growth, for both the lead buyer and the lead seller.

Fancy some more info on feedback loops? Check out the full podcast on Spotify, Apple or watch over on Databowl’s YouTube Channel.