What is a Lead in Digital Marketing?
The lead generation is the main purpose of expert all want to multiply conversions and profits for your company. Therefore, let’s see what a lead is in marketing , what are the types of leads and how to get them through Inbound strategies.
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What is a lead in marketing?
A lead or contact is a person interested enough in your products or services to provide you with their contact information through the form on a landing page . This makes, for practical purposes, a lead is a record in your databases with which you can interact.
Keep in mind that lead is not synonymous with subscriber. A subscriber is someone who has agreed to receive your communications through a newsletter or the contents of your blog. But you still don’t have (or don’t know you have) a problem that one of your products or services can solve.
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Instead, the lead shows interest in your offer from the start. Hence the enormous importance of converting subscribers into sales leads through Lead Nurturing actions (I’ll talk about this later).
In practice, a simple but not rigorous way to distinguish a lead from a subscriber is that the former has provided their data through a web page , and the latter has not.
Now that you know what a lead is in marketing, let’s see why generating leads is so important .
What is the importance of leads in marketing?
In a way, getting a lead implies that a person has authorized you to communicate with him or her to provide information, suggest products, make commercial offers, etc.
This makes it possible to open a two-way communication bridge (and consensual) that allows you to access the user without invading their space or disturbing them. Rather, he or she is interested in what you have to offer. And that makes you a potential customer.
But lead generation is about much more than just making contact. According to Hubspot, in the United States, 44% of marketing messages sent by email are not opened by their recipients. And 200+ million marketing phone numbers are on auto-block lists.
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What is the reason? That traditional marketing means don’t work like they used to (or never worked well enough). It is not enough to spread your products or services to a large number of people. You have to ensure that the information reaches the right contacts.
What are the main types of leads?
You are already clear about how important leads are in marketing. But you should also know that not all are the same. In fact, they evolve over time, either to become business opportunities or simply to be discarded.
In effect, sales leads are classified according to their location in the buying cycle as follows
1. Cold lead
It is the person who has provided us with their contact information, but is far from making a purchase. In fact, their interest in your products or services may be minimal, and it doesn’t actually lead to a business opportunity. This type of lead is in the phase called Top of the Funnel (TOFU) .
2. Qualified Lead for Marketing (MQL)
They have shown great interest in your products and / or services, but they are not ready to buy yet. That is why we say that it is in the Middle of the Funnel ( MOFU ) phase , which you can determine by its behavior.
For example, you know that they have downloaded some content, signed up for an online course, or asked about a particular product or service. However, you should ask for more information to know if it is really a business opportunity.
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It should be said that qualified sales leads or MQL are one of the main KPIs. By meeting the requirements to be classified as leads, they allow you not only to measure the effectiveness of your Inboud Marketing strategy, but they are one step away from becoming qualified leads for sale (SQL).
3. Qualified Lead for Sale (SQL)
This lead is ready to buy, since through his actions he has shown a real interest in acquiring your product or service. For example, responding to a demo, trial, sample, or phone meeting.
Therefore, it is in the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) phase , so it is in every sense a potential customer. In fact, it has been investigated and marked as such by the marketing department and the sales team. So it only remains to determine what actions to take so that you progress smoothly to the next stage of the process.
Both teams must work together to determine those actions. According to a study carried out by Aberdeen Group , this collaboration is capable of increasing the monthly income of the company by 20%. Hence the importance of both sharing the same goals.
How to generate sales leads?
Now, you already know that there are 3 types of leads recognizable by their position in the sales cycle. But how to generate leads? And how to convert them to MQL and then to SQL in order to finalize the purchase?
