- By Camila Ante
A lead is anyone who shows interest in the product or service of a company in any possible way. Typically, a lead knows about a business or organization after opening the communication (by giving personal information for an offer, a trial or subscription), rather than receiving a random call from someone who bought their contact information.
Leads are part of the life cycle that consumers follow when they transition from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created the same (nor are they rated the same). There are different types depending on how they are qualified and the stage of the cycle in which they are.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are contacts who have engaged with the efforts of your marketing team, but are not yet ready to receive the sales call. An example of an MQL is someone filling out a landing page form for an offer.
Qualified Sales Lead (SQL)
Qualified Sales Leads (SQL) are contacts who have already taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming customers. An example of SQL is someone filling out a form to ask a question about your product or service.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) are contacts who have used your product and take actions to indicate that they are interested in becoming a paying customer. PQLs are commonly found in companies that offer a free or limited product trial or version of their product (like HubSpot) with upgrade options, which is when your sales team gets involved. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your version for free, but contacts you or asks about features that are only available for a fee.
Qualified service lead
Qualified service leads are contacts or customers who have indicated to your service team their interest in becoming consumers of your product. An example of these types of leads is a customer who tells your service representative that they would like to improve her product subscription; At this point, the representative would send the person to the appropriate sales team or representative.
Why do you need to generate leads?
Within the Inbound methodology, lead generation falls into the second stage. It takes place after you've attracted an audience and when you're ready to actually convert those visitors into qualified leads for your sales team (i.e. SQL). As you can see in the following diagram, generating leads is a fundamental point in the step of an individual to become a pleased customer of your business.
¿Por qué necesitas generar leads?
Dentro de la metodología Inbound, la generación de leads recae en la segunda etapa. Tiene lugar luego de que atrajiste a una audiencia y cuando estás listo para realmente convertir a esos visitantes en leads calificados para tu equipo de ventas (es decir, SQL). Como puedes observar en el siguiente diagrama, generar leads es un punto fundamental en el paso de un individuo para convertirse en un complacido cliente de tu negocio.
When generating leads, what you really do is find ways to attract people to your business. And provide enough benefits that people are spontaneously interested in your company and eventually become so excited about the brand that they want to hear from you.
It's a way to get potential customers excited about your business and guide them down the road to finally buying.
By showing an organic interest in your business, they initiate the relationship (rather than the business), which makes it easier and more natural for them to want to buy something from you in the future.
Lead generation process
Now that we understand how lead generation is integrated into inbound marketing methodology, let's review the actual components of the lead generation process.
First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media profile.That visitor clicks on your call to action (or call to action, CTA): an image, button or message that encourages visitors to take a desired action.
That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page designed to obtain lead information in exchange for an offer. Note: An offer is the content or something of value that is offered on the landing page, such as an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must be perceived as having sufficient value for a visitor to provide personal information in exchange for access to it.
Once on the landing page, your visitor will fill out a form in exchange for the offer. (It is common for forms to appear on landing pages, but they can be hosted anywhere on your site.) Clever! You already have a new lead, as long as you follow the good practices for its capture.
To sum it up: the visitor clicks on a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to get an offer, at which point they become a lead.
Marketing for lead generation
Once you combine all the elements, you can use various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads. But what channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let's talk about the interface that takes care of lead generation: marketing for lead generation.
destino para empezar a generar leads. Pero ¿Cuáles canales deberías usar para promover tu página de destino? Hablemos de la interfaz que se encarga de la generación de leads: marketing para lead generation.
There are other channels that you can use to get visitors who turn into leads. Let's go through them in depth and talk about a few more.
Contents
Creating content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to give your visitors free and useful information. You can include CTAs anywhere: at the beginning or end of an article, in a banner in the header, or even in a side panel. The more satisfied a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click on your call to action and go to your landing page.
Email is a good place to reach people who already know your brand and product or service. It is much easier to ask them to complete an action since they have subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit crowded, so use a CTA that has eye-catching copy and an attractive design to get the attention of your subscribers.
Ads and retargeting
The purpose of an ad is to get people to do something. Otherwise, why spend money? If you want people to convert, make sure your landing page and offer are exactly what you promised in the ad, and that the action you want them to take is clear.
Blog
The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can create the right piece for that purpose. For example, if your offer is an educational video on how to set up Google Search Console, then write a blog post that explains how to set your marketing metrics ... which could make your CTA very relevant and clickable.
Social media
Social media platforms make it easy for you to guide your followers to take action, from swiping up on Instagram Stories to links in Facebook bios or cropped URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offers in your posts and updates, and include a CTA in your copy.
Product testing
You can overcome many barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect uses it, you can attract them with additional offers or resources that encourage them to buy. Another good practice is to include your brand image in your free versions so that you capture other leads as well.
Referential Marketing
Referential marketing, or word of mouth, is useful for lead generation, but in a different way. That is, it puts your brand in front of more people, which in turn increases your opportunities to generate more leads.
Whichever channel you use to generate leads, guide users to your landing page. As long as you build one that does the conversion, the rest will do itself.
Why not just buy leads?
Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel, and they want it to be fast. Hence the temptation to buy leads. Buying leads, as opposed to generating them organically, is much easier and takes less time and effort, even though it is more expensive. But you pay to advertise anyway, so why not buy leads?
First of all, any lead you buy doesn't really know you. Most likely, they accepted when registering for something on a third party site, and did not choose to receive anything from your company.
The messages you send them are therefore unwanted. And sending spam is invasive. If the prospect has never been to your website or indicated an interest in your products or services, then you interrupt them ... it's that simple.
If he never specifically chose to receive messages from you, then there is a high probability that he will mark them as spam, which is very dangerous for your business. This not only trains your email provider to filter your messages, it also tells them which ones to not allow in at all.
Once a sufficient number of people mark you as spam, you will be blacklisted, which is then shared with other email providers. When they are on that blacklist, it is very, very difficult to get off it. Also, your email delivery and IP reputation will be damaged.
Source: Hubspot.es
