Lead Generation Marketing
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service.
Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription), instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue.
And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems.
Leads are part of the lifecycle of transitioning visitors to customers. Not all leads are the same. There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service.
Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription), instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue.
And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems.
Leads are part of the lifecycle of transitioning visitors to customers. Not all leads are the same. There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service.
Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription), instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue.
And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems.
Leads are part of the lifecycle of transitioning visitors to customers. Not all leads are the same. There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Marketing qualified leads are contacts who have engaged with your marketing team’s efforts but aren’t ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
Sales qualified leads are contacts who’ve taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming paying customers. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
Product qualified leads are contacts who’ve used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product with options to upgrade.
An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but asks about features that are only available upon payment.
Service Qualified Lead
Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who’ve indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming paying customers.
For example, a customer could tell their customer service representative that they’d like to upgrade their product subscription. At this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into a customer. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, blog posts, 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 guide them toward your offers.
Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I create content for lead generation.” I’d get some really confused looks.
So instead, I say, “I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand and want to hear from us!”
That usually resonates better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business. This gets them on the path to eventually making a purchase.
Why do you need lead generation?
When someone shows an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural. You enhance this transition through inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is a methodology to attract loyal customers to your business by aligning with your target audience's needs. Creating tailored marketing experiences through valuable content is the core of an inbound marketing strategy that helps you drive customer engagement and growth.
Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team.
As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual’s journey to becoming a delighted customer.
The Lead Generation Process
Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps 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.
- That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
- That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, a web page designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.
- Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you follow lead capture from best practices.
Note: An offer is the content or resource that’s being promoted on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough value for a visitor to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.
See how everything fits together?
To sum it up: Visitor clicks 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.
