Why Can't You Utilize MA? Causes and Solutions Explained (With Case Studies)

What Is a Lead?

A lead refers to a potential customer who has shown interest in a product or service. Leads are identified through various touchpoints with a company, such as website visits, engagement with email marketing, or downloading content.

The Importance of Leads in Marketing Automation

Leads are one of the most critical elements of Marketing Automation (MA). MA supports a series of marketing activities—collecting lead information, analyzing it, taking appropriate actions, and handing off prospects to the sales department—through digital tools.

Therefore, the effectiveness of MA can be significantly diminished depending on how lead information is handled.

Specific issues include:

• Insufficient quantity or quality of leads
• Inadequate data cleansing
• Incorrect lead scoring

These are just a few examples.
Let us examine the causes and countermeasures for each.

Insufficient Lead Quantity

Key MA functions such as lead scoring, analysis, and effectiveness measurement deliver results only when a sufficient volume of lead information is fed into the tool.

If you attempt to utilize MA with a low number of leads, the small sample size available for analysis makes it difficult to achieve results. Furthermore, it means there are fewer targets to approach, which proportionally reduces the number of closed deals.

Therefore, it is necessary to first implement initiatives to increase the volume of leads. Additionally, continuous efforts are required to prevent lead depletion.

Causes of Insufficient Lead Quantity

【Lack of Marketing Activities】

If necessary marketing activities—such as advertising, content marketing, SEO, and social media utilization—are insufficient, lead volume will be low. It is important to recognize that relying on a single approach, such as "website only," makes it difficult to collect leads in the current landscape, and adopting a multi-faceted approach is essential.

【Insufficient Exposure to Target Audience】

Even if you engage in various initiatives like advertising and social media, you cannot generate leads if you are not appropriately exposing your products or services to your target audience.

Countermeasures

【Strengthening Marketing Activities】

Various methods can be considered, such as enhancing content marketing, placing paid advertisements, promoting via social media, exhibiting at trade shows, and participating in events.

【Expanding Exposure to the Target Market】

Analyze customers, your own company, and competitors to clarify the target market. Then, conduct marketing activities directed at the appropriate target.

【Leveraging Partnerships】

Utilizing partnerships with other companies is also an effective strategy. Through joint promotions or events with partner companies, you can reach customer segments that would be difficult to access on your own.

【Using Corporate Databases】

Another method is to use external corporate database services to uncover target markets that have not been approached previously.

• New Business Development with One of Japan's Largest Corporate Databases ▶

Low Lead Quality

Even if you feed a sufficient volume of leads into your MA, if the quality is poor, the results will be limited.

Lead quality refers to the "level of purchase intent of the prospect" and the "degree of fit with the product or service." If lead quality is low, even if you proceed with lead nurturing using MA, problems will eventually arise, such as failing to lead to business negotiations or being unable to build long-term customer relationships even if a deal is closed.

Causes of Low Lead Quality

【Ambiguous Target Definition】

If the definition of your target or ideal customer profile (buyer persona) is ambiguous, you will acquire leads that are unlikely to have interest. As a result, lead quality declines.

【Inappropriate Content】

Lead quality also decreases if the content does not match the needs or interests of the target audience.

Countermeasures

【Clarifying Target Definition】

It is important to clearly define your ideal customer profile (buyer persona). Analyze customers, your own company, and competitors to define the attributes of customers who most need your company's products or services, as well as their problems and challenges. With a clear definition, you can develop marketing strategies to acquire high-quality leads that match those criteria.

【Content Optimization】

After defining the target, optimize marketing content to match their needs and interests. Examples include creating articles or white papers that provide information to solve specific challenges faced by the target audience.

Inadequate Data Cleansing

Lead information collected through various marketing activities is never entirely accurate; it often contains duplicates, missing information, or incorrect data. Lead data cleansing is the process of cleaning this information to improve the quality of lead data.

If lead data cleansing is not performed, even if you use MA, it will lead to decreased productivity and lack of results, such as incorrect analysis, flawed scoring, or wasted outreach efforts.

Causes of Inadequate Lead Data Cleansing

【Lack of Resources】

Data cleansing requires specialized skills and effort. If you are managing a large volume of lead data and lack the resources (personnel, time, technology) to perform data cleansing, it may not be carried out appropriately.
Regarding client data in particular, data notation is prone to variation depending on the person entering it—such as the presence or absence of corporate status, abbreviations, confusion between headquarters and branches, and variations in address notation—which easily leads to duplicate data.

【Lack of Understanding Regarding the Importance of Data Cleansing】

If the importance of data cleansing is not sufficiently understood within the company, MA will continue to be used without the data being properly maintained.

Countermeasures

【Securing Resources】

It is necessary to secure the resources required for data cleansing, such as personnel, time, and technology. For example, assign staff skilled in data management or set aside dedicated time for data cleansing.

【Promoting Internal Education】

Promote education and training to ensure the importance of data cleansing is understood and executed.

【Utilizing Automation Tools】

Consider introducing tools or software that streamline data cleansing tasks. By automating the data cleansing process with tools, it becomes possible to perform data cleansing without allocating human resources.

【Maintaining a Corporate Master Database】

Maintain a corporate master database of clients using publicly available information from government ministries and data from database companies. This benefits not only MA but also other systems such as SFA, CRM, and core systems. By maintaining the internal corporate master database under the same standards, data integration becomes possible.

Incorrect Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the process of quantifying interest in your company's services based on behavioral history to identify the most valuable leads among prospects. However, if scoring settings are inappropriate, you may overlook important leads or waste resources on low-quality leads.

Causes of Incorrect Lead Scoring

【Errors in Setting Scoring Criteria】

If scoring criteria are set inappropriately, leads will not be evaluated accurately. For example, excessive scores might be assigned to unimportant actions, or conversely, low scores might be set for important actions.

【Lack of Response to Changes in Market Environment】

If scoring is not updated to reflect changes in the market environment or customer behavior, the accuracy of lead evaluation will decline.

Countermeasures

【Reviewing Scoring Criteria】

Examine what actions a lead should take to warrant a high score and how much those actions contribute to successful business negotiations or deals, then reset the scores for each action.

【Continuous Review of Scoring】

Scoring is not a one-time setup. Regularly review it in response to changes in the market environment and customer behavior, and update the scoring criteria as necessary. This ensures that scoring always reflects the latest situation.

【Data Analysis and Utilization】

Analyze past data and utilize it for setting scoring criteria. For example, analyze whether high-scoring leads actually led to business negotiations or deals, and adjust the scoring based on those results.

Customer Success Stories: Achieving Results Through Successful MA Implementation

By integrating MA with the corporate data tool uSonar, it is possible to maximize the effectiveness of your MA implementation.

Case Study: SAKURA internet Inc.

Challenges Before Implementing uSonar

• Unable to grasp accurate transaction history by company or corporate group due to data deficiencies such as notation variations.
• Lack of corporate attributes available for analysis because many clients are small and medium-sized enterprises, making it difficult to match with credit data.

Benefits of Implementation

• Realized accurate grasp of transaction history by company and corporate group through the use of LBC codes.
• Realized analysis and scoring using corporate attributes such as industry and revenue scale held by "LBC," and selected priorities for nurturing.
• Enabled the extraction of accurate white space (non-trading companies), realizing efficient marketing activities utilizing data.

Details of the case study are available here

"uSonar" to Increase MA Implementation Effectiveness
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