Inbound Marketing takes time. There are no shortcuts, but eventually, your hard work starts to pay off in the form of lead generation.

As a bonus, with Inbound in place, you will have plenty of metrics to prove your success and analyze for improvement. But there’s a difference in generating leads and generating qualified leads.

As you begin your lead generation efforts, remember not all leads are worth pursuing. You’ll often encounter vendors trying to sell you services, competitors researching you and your content, as well as international marketers looking at your efforts.

Chances are none of those leads will ever become customers. So how do you keep them out of your database and know they aren’t quality leads to pursue?

Use Your Forms

Your forms are your first line of defense. You can use email form fields and additional information fields to weed out low-quality leads.

Requiring potential leads to fill out information acts as a small deterrent to those seeking to sell or research you. However, you can always look at the information given to determine lead quality.

If your visitors are filling out forms like this, they’re likely not worth pursuing:

  • Providing fake contact information
  • Using a personal email address
  • Leaving form fields blank
  • Little to no engagement with your site’s content

If a visitor uses as little information as possible to convert into a lead, it can signal you and your team that they aren’t really that interested in you or your product/service. When they’re genuinely ready to convert, they’ll provide you with the right information.

Marketing Automation with HubSpot

HubSpot’s Smart Lists allow you to compile lists based on data people have given you automatically. With this feature, you can easily separate qualified and unqualified leads.

If any low-quality leads happen to slip through the cracks, however, it’s important to remove them from your database right away. To completely remove all unqualified leads, you may need to do a bit of manual database trimming.

For inbound marketing to be truly effective, it’s critical to keep a well-maintained database of leads. Maintaining your lead quality can help improve lead to customer conversion rates and improve overall team efficiency.