What is a lead?
A lead is, simply put, a potential customer – a person who has shown interest in your products or services. For you to become aware of their interest, they must, for example, have filled out a form or carried out some other type of activity through your company’s channels.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation involves getting potential customers interested in your services or products by gradually guiding them through a so-called “funnel” or sales funnel, to ensure that they become paying customers.
In a digital landscape with limited time to influence potential customers, effective lead generation can look like this:
- Tailored marketing with a personalized message
- Consistent messaging across multiple channels
- Focus on educating the customer about your services
- Facilitate a meaningful relationship between company and customer
When we talk about the quality of incoming leads, we usually distinguish between marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales qualified leads (SQL).
Why is lead generation so important?
- You spend less time and resources on sales
Without lead generation, it falls on the salesperson’s shoulders to reach out to, warm up, and convert every single customer. This is a time-consuming process that costs the company a lot of time and resources, because the salespeople have to start from scratch with each potential customer.
By having the marketing department implement initiatives to warm up potential customers, they are ready to buy by the time they get in touch with the salesperson. This will make the sales team’s day-to-day work more efficient, as they only reach out to leads who have expressed an interest and already have a relationship with the company.
This way, it becomes clearer which sales conversations should be prioritized, and to hold off on those leads that need more time (cold leads).
- You get more satisfied customers
Anyone who has received a call from a telesales representative can probably relate to how it can feel intrusive and unwanted. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the salesperson; the salesperson may actually be doing an excellent job, yet still be perceived as pushy. The reason for this is that the customers have not been warmed up in advance.
If you invest time and effort in warming up prospects at their own pace, with content tailored to where they are in the customer journey, you will get a completely different response. Your target audience essentially just wants to know and learn more about your company, and needs that breathing space before they can make a decision.
- You achieve a higher conversion rate
With warm leads, your sales conversations will feel more meaningful and positive. Customers will meet you with a completely different mindset and be more open to what you have to say. At this point, they also understand what products or services you have to offer.
As a company, you will be perceived as more credible, and instead of spending time pitching your product, you can now focus on how you can best meet this customer and their needs.
Overall, this results in more successful sales meetings, and you will see the conversion rate from lead to customer increase!
So, how do you get more leads?
To generate leads, you depend on getting contact information from the lead. Here, we are mainly talking about email addresses. Just think about how many people visit your website but may never return. This is what we can avoid if you collect email addresses from visitors. Let’s look at methods that can help you generate more leads:
- Call to action (CTA)
A CTA encourages the user to take action, whether that’s clicking a button, subscribing, or commenting. You can find CTAs in social media posts, videos, at the end of an article, and so on.
It is important that the CTA is visually consistent while also presenting an attractive offer. Make sure to include CTAs in every channel where you are present – from your website to newsletters and blog posts.
- Email in exchange for a benefit
You can get valuable downloadable content for free by providing your email address. Or maybe you receive a 15% discount on your first purchase in an online store? A free trial of the product, or a subscription?
Exchanging something in return for an email address must be attractive enough to deliver real value for the customer. The point is that it should not cost visitors anything more than their email address.
Get valuable insights on email marketing here.
- Landing pages
A landing page is used to get visitors to complete the action the CTA encouraged them to take. It provides more information about the offer and what they can expect, as well as a contact form they can fill out to receive the benefit.
Finally, it is recommended to include checkboxes that the lead can tick to consent to receiving relevant newsletters from you.
Get started with lead generation together with us
You now hopefully have a better understanding of what lead generation is all about. All in all, we can say that lead generation is an almost fully automated process that enables customers to find you, reach out to you, and gradually warm up. What could be better than that? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’re eager to learn more!
