As a marketing agency, generating and nurturing high-quality leads is essential for growth. While there’s no shortage of ways to go about finding agency leads and storing their data, having a streamlined, systematized, and well-managed lead generation database is non-negotiable as you scale your business. 

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In this blog post, we’ll cover what lead generation databases are, why marketing agencies need them, what data your database should track, and how to manage and leverage your database to deliver better digital marketing services. 

What is a lead generation database?

A lead generation database is a collection of information about prospective customers that a business either intends to contact or has already contacted. While this basic definition holds for all kinds of lead gen databases, they can vary drastically in terms of complexity and functionality. The most basic databases might comprise a simple Excel spreadsheet with the business name, contact name, and contact information. More robust databases can include built-in B2B automated lead generation functionality and more granular data about the lead’s behavior.

Since digital marketing agencies typically deal with vast numbers of leads, a well-managed, feature-rich lead-generation database is an important tool. It makes it possible to track new business opportunities, lead nurturing activities, potential lead value, and other important information that helps agencies plan and grow their business.

Why marketing agencies need a lead generation database

Success in a competitive agency landscape is often a function of how effective your systems are. A lead generation database represents a systematization of the lead generation process, enabling you to take important information off your mental load while remaining confident that you have a system in place to contact and nurture leads. If you’re not using a lead gen database yet, let’s take a closer look at why you should be.

Common agency lead management challenges

Whether you’re a startup or you have a thriving agency, lead generation and management is a necessary activity since some degree of customer churn is expected. However, without a database, you’ll face some or all of these challenges:

• Tracking and managing across multiple channels: Agencies use many types of lead generation strategies. You might contact leads via email, phone calls, social media, agency networking, or even in-person visits. If these aren’t centralized in a single location, it’s easy to lose track of them. 
• Missing key opportunities: Making an initial connection and collecting key data is important, but conversion is all about follow-through. If you don’t follow up with leads when they’re most interested, you might lose them to a competitor. 
• Focusing on the wrong leads: Without a system for ranking leads, salespeople can waste time pursuing leads that are unlikely to convert while hotter leads get less attention. 
• Double-contacting leads: Particularly on larger teams, it’s possible to accidentally double-contact leads with the same information. This makes your business appear poorly organized and unprofessional, damaging your agency brand.
• Failing to contact promising leads: Relying solely on manual search methods to find leads can leave many promising prospective clients uncontacted.

How a lead generation database can help

Lead generation databases offer a comprehensive solution to all the common pitfalls outlined above.

They provide one central home for all lead management data, eliminating the problems of tracking across multiple platforms and double-contacting leads. The most robust databases also include features like AI-powered lead ranking, automated lead list generation, and lead behavior data that informs teams when leads are most likely to convert, enabling agencies to put the most important lead management activities on autopilot. 

All lead-related information lives in your single source of truth, your lead gen database, ensuring consistency and accuracy across your organization even as you scale. This frees up staff time to focus on more critical activities, like cultivating relationships and closing deals.

What data is needed in a lead generation database

Effective lead generation for marketing agencies requires access to a variety of data beyond just prospect names and email addresses. The best lead generation databases will include a variety of data points to support your marketing efforts. Here are some key data types to include in your database: 

• Business name
• Business address
• Key contact name
• Role of key contact (ie. owner, marketing director)
• Contact Information
• Industry
• Business revenue if available
• Number of employees

This demographic data helps agencies gauge whether a lead is a good fit for their services and provides key information that can inform the types of solutions they may purchase.  Once they’re captured in your lead generation database, you can start collecting more valuable behavioral data:

• Website interactions such as pages visited and time spent on the website (Pages Visited, Time Spent)
• Content engagement such as video views or report downloads
• Social media interactions
• Email open and click-through data
• Conversion events such as demo requests

While demographic data can help your agency gather insights that inform how you approach a lead, behavioral data is where the magic happens, especially when it comes to managing lead lists that are in the hundreds, thousands, or more. As that list grows, it’s easy to understand the difficulty of gauging which leads should get the most attention. 

Behavioral data solves this problem by helping agencies gauge interest levels and fine-tune their outreach in a granular, personalized way. 

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Timing is everything

For your lead generation database to help your agency close more clients, it needs to be up-to-the-minute accurate. Outdated data can easily lead to wasted team resources and missed opportunities. The most robust databases automatically audit and update key demographic data and provide real-time behavioral data, so you can focus on leveraging it rather than checking it for accuracy. 

How to properly manage a lead generation database

The central value of lead databases is how they automate so much of the lead generation and management process, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely hands-off. Knowing how to manage your database will help you get the best results and maximize the potential of your tool.

Practice data hygiene

Data hygiene refers to the practice of ensuring the data in your database is accurate and reliable. While high-quality lead generation databases take care of most of this, it’s still important to create a data maintenance schedule to validate that everything is operating smoothly. 

To do this, use a dedicated tool or third-party service to clean and validate your data. Third-party services are more expensive but may be worthwhile occasionally for very large datasets. Be sure to periodically remove duplicates and consolidate redundant entries in your database. These often arise when a business moves to a different location, adds locations, or if contacts in key roles are replaced by new people.

Segment your data

Just as segmentation is a best practice in email marketing, it can help you find digital marketing clients when applied to your lead data. By creating segments, your team can tailor their outreach approach based on the behaviors and needs of each segment instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach. 

To do this, determine the segmentation criteria most relevant to your marketing niche or industry. Your lead generation database platform should have built-in segmentation tools. Then, consider how each segment can be best addressed based on its defining characteristics. For example, if you have a segment for recent conversion events such as website downloads, those prospects are likely hot and should be contacted immediately after the event. 

Remember, your lead segments don’t have to be set in stone—feel free to adjust them based on data, your experience, and new lead generation ideas you encounter.

How to leverage your lead generation data into your digital marketing strategies

The real value of systematizing your collection and management of lead generation data is to put it to use in growing your agency. The insights from your database should inform your digital marketing strategies, helping you better communicate with your audience and, ultimately, grow your bottom line. Here’s how.

Craft personalized messaging

By analyzing lead demographics, behavior, and site interactions, marketers can write personalized messaging that resonates more deeply with their audience.

For example, you can leverage data to send targeted email campaigns with personalized subject lines and content based on lead preferences. Landing pages can also be customized to align with the interests and needs of each audience segment

This can be applied to the lead nurturing phase too, with automated drip campaigns and personalized follow-up sequences based on interactions with your other digital touchpoints.

Create targeted ad campaigns

Since digital advertising platforms include many options for refined ad targeting, they’re a perfect place to put your lead gen data to work creating targeted campaigns that reach your dream clients. 

To do this, you can use demographic and behavioral data from your database to create custom audience segments for pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Then, repurpose browsing history data to create even more effective retargeting ads.