Marketing Strategy Lead – Learn how lead generation fits into your inbound marketing strategy and easy ways to start generating leads for your business.
We’ve all been there. You finally sit down to dinner at the end of a long day. You’re about to grab a bite to eat when the phone rings. This is a telemarketer asking about your oven preferences. This frustrating interruption didn’t have to happen. Inbound lead generation offers a solution. Let’s start by defining a lead. Next, we’ll cover why you need lead generation and how to qualify someone as a lead. Soon you will know why generating inbound leads is more effective than buying leads. What is a lead? What is lead generation? Lead Generation Process How to Qualify a Lead Strategies What is a Lead? A lead is any person who indicates an interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form. After opening a communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial or subscription) leads typically ask from a business or organization… Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to care for your car. A day later, you receive an email from the car company that created a survey on how you can help take care of your car. The process would be a lot less invasive if they called you out without knowing if you even cared about car maintenance, right? This is how it is if you are a leader. From a business perspective, the information the car company gathers about you from your survey responses helps them maintain an open line of communication to resolve your ongoing issues — and not waste time calling customers who aren’t interested in car services. Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow as they move from prospect to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they equally qualified). There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they are in. Fill out the form to access our exclusive resource free ebook guide on lead gen best practices. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Marketing qualified leads are contacts who are engaged in the marketing team’s efforts but are not ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact filling out a landing page form for an offer. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) Sales Qualified Leads are contacts who have taken action that clearly indicates their interest in becoming paying customers. An example of SQL is a contact filling out a form to ask a question about your product or service. Product Qualified Leads (PQL) Product Qualified Leads are contacts who have used your product and taken steps to indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. Companies that offer a trial or free or limited version of their product with options to upgrade usually have PQLs, and this is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available for payment. Serviceable Leads Serviceable leads are contacts or customers who have indicated to your service team that they are interested in becoming paying customers. An example of a service-qualified lead is when a customer tells their customer service representative that they want to upgrade their product subscription; At this time the customer service representative will promote that customer to the appropriate sales team or representative. What is lead generation? Lead generation is all about attracting and nurturing potential customers to your business, increasing their interest, all with the ultimate goal of converting them into a customer. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, postings, coupons, live events, and online content. These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and direct them towards your offers. (We’ll talk more about strategy later.) If someone outside of the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t just say, “I create content for lead generation.” It would be completely lost on them and I would get some confused looks. So instead I say, “I’m working on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to give them enough goodies to make them naturally interested in my company. From us!” It usually resonates better, and that’s what lead generation is all about: a way to excite customers about your business and get them on the path to purchase. Why do you need lead generation? When a stranger starts a relationship with you and shows an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is more natural. Lead generation falls into the second phase of the inbound marketing system. This happens after you have attracted visitors and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (aka sales qualified leads). As you can see in the chart below, lead generation is a fundamental point in an individual’s journey to becoming a satisfied customer. The Lead Generation Process Now that we understand how lead generation fits into an inbound marketing approach, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process. First, a visitor finds your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website or social media page. Call-to-action (CTA) – Clicks on an image, button or message that encourages the website visitor to take some action. This CTA takes visitors to a landing page, a web page designed to capture prospect information in exchange for an offer. An offer is something of value that is “offered” on the content or landing page. It can be an e-book, a course or a template. On the landing page, the visitor fills out a form in exchange for an offer. See how it fits together? In short: Visitors click on a CDA, which takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to receive an offer, and then they become a customer. You should check out our free lead generation tool. It lets you create lead capture forms directly on your website. In addition, it is very easy to set up. Lead Generation Marketing Once you put all these elements together, you can use your various advertising channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads. But which channels should you use to promote your landing page? Lead Generation – Let’s talk about the front end of lead marketing. If you’re a visual learner, this diagram shows the flow of leads generated from advertising marketing channels. There are many more channels you can use to convert visitors into leads. Let’s explore these and talk about a few more. Content content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Generally, you create content to provide useful, free information to your audience. You can add CTAs anywhere in your content – inline, post footer, hero or sidebar. The more satisfied a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call to action and go to your landing page. Featured Resource HubSpot eBook Templates Email Email is a great place to reach people who already know your brand and your product or service. Since they’re already subscribed to your list, it’s much easier to ask them to do something. Emails can be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs with attractive copy and eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention. Exclusive Resource A Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing Ads and Retargeting An ad’s sole purpose is to get people to take action. Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, you need to make sure your landing page and offer match exactly what your ad promises and the action you want users to take is clear. The beauty of using your posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. If you provide an instructional video on how to set up Google Search Console, you can write a post on how to choose marketing metrics… that will make your CTA more relevant and easier to click. For a quick video overview of HubSpot’s expert lead generation tips, check out our video guide. Featured Resource 6 Free Post Templates for Social Media Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action from the swipe up option on Instagram Stories.
Marketing Strategy Lead
