If you’re relying only on the number of inquiries your site receives to judge the success of your online marketing campaigns, you could be overstating your results by as much as 50 percent.

Lead validation, which is the process of separating sales leads from other non-sales conversions, will prevent that from happening. When marketers validate leads, they will be able to adjust campaigns using data that proves which online channels are generating actual sales leads. An indirect benefit of having your marketing team validate leads: Your sales reps can put more of their efforts into genuine leadsinstead of using valuable time sifting through a lot of non-leads.

Created by Charlotte SEO experts Straight North, here are a few highlights from “The Importance of Lead Validation” study:

• First visits are crucial, with 85 percent of leads converting on the first visit. The number drops drastically after that.
• More leads converton Mondays and Tuesdays than any other days of the week, with 19 percent of all conversions taking place on each of those two days.
• Through lead validation you will know the accurate cost per lead versus cost per conversion, which the data in the study proves can be misleading.