Do People Provide False Contact Information Online? 69% of the time!

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It’s true! Landing pages and web forms can bring inaccurate information into your database.

Landing pages are increasingly gaining ground as a popular online marketing tactic. Organizations include a strategically designed landing page in their package of marketing tools because it offers them the opportunity to ask for visitor information. From downloading a whitepaper in exchange for an email address to requesting a free trial by providing more detailed contact information, individuals do respond to a compelling call-to-action in a landing page that catches their attention.

I read an article recently about a Poll Daddy survey that asked respondents if they provided inaccurate contact information on landing pages, and also which contact details they lied about. So it appears that the majority of this small (really tiny) group of respondents said they intentionally give inaccurate information in contact forms they have to fill out on landing pages. 69% of the time, according to this survey, people will lie about their coordinates. They’re calling it the “Pinocchio Principle” reminding marketers that “A lead isn’t a lead until someone is engaged enough to be honest with you.

This article/commentary is symptomatic of what ails the industry – the so called “experts” cannot even distinguish between a tactic and actual lead generation. In my opinion, they are confusing a tactical element with a more holistic lead generation process. No matter how intriguing your landing page, how engaging your blog, how interactive your website or how advanced your automated lead generation tools may be, you still need a filter; a very good filter. No hand-raiser should ever make it to sales without that filter. There is always a need to sift the grain from the chaff.

There are “contacts”, there are “visitors”, there are “hand-raisers”, and then there are “leads”. For successful B2B lead generation, you need to know that there is a difference.

Pull, don’t push; and you are more likely to find true leads

Think about it; why do people feel compelled to withhold their contact details from an organization? And I’m not only talking about this article or the poll they reference. We all do this, a lot of the time, in a personal and professional environment. If I don’t want to hear from a company or individual, I won’t tell them how to get in touch with me. This means I am not a qualified lead for them at this point. But when a landing page “pushes” me to provide information without which I can’t download that whitepaper or try their free offer then I am encouraged to lie.

On the other hand, if I could get to the “offer” without these “push” strategies, I may actually discover a good reason to want to know more about the company. There is a good chance that I am drawn or “pulled” into their leads database; scoring as a true lead this time, not just a hand-raiser. You can read a case study I mentioned on my blog in the past about this Pull vs. Push strategy for lead generation.

What online marketing tactics does your company use on a regular basis? I’d be interested to know how you filter responses to manage lead qualification and lead scoring. Leave me a comment.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Louis Foong
Louis Foong is the founder and CEO of The ALEA Group Inc., one of North America's most innovative B2B demand generation specialists. With more than three decades of experience in the field, Louis is a thought leader on trends, best practices and issues concerning marketing and lead generation. Louis' astute sense of marketing and sales along with a clear vision of the evolving lead generation landscape has proved beneficial to numerous organizations, both small and large.

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