What is lead generation, and why do you need to know?
If you own a business and need to draw people to your product or service, you need to understand lead generation.
So, let’s start by defining a lead and lead generation. A lead is a potential client who has shown interest in your brand by taking action, such as responding to an email, postcard, or filling out a form. Lead generation is the process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service to develop a sales pipeline, allowing companies to nurture targets until they are ready to buy.
The main goal of lead generation is to fill up the sales funnel for your business. When you increase leads, you increase brand awareness and interest in your products or services. The more leads you have, the more potential clients and the more people in the sales pipeline. Keep in mind that not all leads convert to customers.
How exactly does lead generation work, and how can I use it to grow my business?
A potential client is looking for answers and discovers your business through your marketing channels (website, blog, or social media page). The client clicks your Call to Action (CTA), which takes them to a landing page that you created to capture lead information in exchange for an offer. The offer must have enough value for the client to provide their data. Once the potential client is on your landing page, they complete the form with their information in exchange for the offer. Now you have a lead.
The leads move to the sales or marketing team. The sales team starts with cold leads, which you can utilize in your cold calling, emailing, and cold marketing campaigns. Once the sales team gains a lead, they should source and filter them out and choose to work more closely with the most engaged leads. Marketers will focus more on warm leads through their marketing channels, choosing to make a sale right away or forward them to the sales department.
As your sales and marketing teams move leads along the sales funnel, building relationships with the leads is essential. People don’t buy from companies; they buy from people. Building relationships builds trust and respect, which increases the likelihood of a lead becoming a client. Potential leads have questions and concerns that your content doesn’t always answer. People want to know you are there for their needs. Building a relationship lets you determine what leads don’t like about your service/product and why they haven’t converted to a client.
There are many benefits to a strong relationship with your leads:
Increased trust
Greater marketing insight
Strengthened customer loyalty
Expanded customer base
As you are acquiring leads, it will be essential to categorize them to help determine which leads you should prioritize. As a result, you will save time and money as you move your leads through the sales funnel.
Here are a few of the ways you can categorize your leads:
Position/location in the sales funnel
Intent
Enrichment
Qualification
We have only scratched the surface of lead generation. If you would like to read more detailed explanations on categorizing leads, download the companion piece below. Contact MLC Expert Consulting by calling 843.819.0103 or messaging us through our website to discuss how we can further help you.
Introduction to Lead Generation
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