The word ‘lead’ has been bandied about a lot in the past four years or so, and it seems to have spawned more than its fair share of confusion in the process. Aside from all the technical jargon that usually comes with business-related terms, there is also quite a bit of misinterpretation regarding the meaning of lead, who should have it, or who should own it.
Lead generation support definition: There are many types of lead generation support A business can offer to its potential customers. This support can be vital in the process of finding new leads for your business’ sales. The lead generation support should be free and impartial; this is especially important when planning a long-term marketing strategy. In today’s video, I am going to go over some available lead generation support that you can offer to your potential customers and why you should offer them. Let’s get started!
Lead generation . Lead generation . Lead generation . It’s a term that is often used in sales and marketing. And frequently, the people who use this term don’t actually understand anthing about lead generation . Or, as is often the case with things that are over-used, they understand what it means, but not why it’s important.
Lead generation is basically getting customers who are ready and willing to pay your company’s product or services. Having leads signifies that the business will see an increase in profit and become more competitive in the market. As a support, you need to generate leads specifically that fit to your business. For this, you must be aware of lead generation definition. To know more about what it means exactly read this article.
What is Lead Generation?
Where traditional marketing methods such as email blasts used to be enough to draw customers, the increase of competition and information abundance is making it more difficult for companies to track, reach, and engage with potential customers. Lead generation, the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline, allows companies to nurture targets until they’re ready to buy. Lead generation can be useful for any type or size of business, and for both B2C and B2B spaces. Sixty percent of marketers state that lead generation is a key pain point for their company. Determining a good lead is more complex than just targeting people who downloaded your white paper, and it’s important that your sales reps don’t waste their time cold calling unqualified leads when there are ways to narrow down the pool.
When you implement a lead generation program, you increase brand awareness, build relationships, generate qualified leads, and ultimately close deals. The higher quality leads you direct your sales team to, the more of those leads will result in sales. In doing this, you are helping your company grow, while also growing the credibility for your marketing department by showing tangible results and proving yourself to be a valuable part of the revenue team.
Lead generation has been around for a long time, but methods have changed from simply finding a customer early on in their sales journey and sending the sales team their way. The self-directed buyer is inundated with information, so it’s vital to find new, creative ways to cut through the static and reach potential customers. Instead of finding customers through mass advertising and email blasts, marketers must rely on being found and building relationships with their buyers. In the age of information abundance, marketing is going through a massive shift.
“Customers are now smarter, more connected, more informed, more influenced and influential socially, and less likely to respond to campaign-bait. Marketing has to create content people actually want.”
Common problems that lead generation can solve
Simple batch and blast advertising doesn’t appeal to the self-directed buyer, and having a solid lead generation program in place can help you navigate the new complexity surrounding lead generation. Below are a few problems lead generation can help solve.
- Problem: I need to generate a high volume of leads. If you’re just starting out, a lead generation program can result in increased brand awareness, new relationships, higher quality leads, and more sales. If you’re looking to optimize an existing program, you may want to reevaluate your audience profiles, buyer journey, channels, and tactics. Keep your goals, customer concerns, and challenges in mind, deliver content that solves their pain points, and keep nurturing those relationships—soon you’ll have a funnel filled with qualified leads.
- Problem: My sales team says that I’m not delivering high-quality leads. There are several reasons why your sales team is struggling to convert leads into customers. First, sales and marketing should be in agreement about what constitutes a qualified lead, and when that lead should be handed off, keeping in mind that 96% of people visiting your website aren’t ready to buy yet. If sales contacts them too soon, they may feel put off—buyers today do not want to feel sold to. Lead quality is important, but it’s a major challenge for marketers, so it may take some time to start bringing in qualified leads.
- Problem: I’m bringing in leads, but don’t have a strategy around what to do next. Generating leads is just one part of lead generation. Once you bring these leads in, you must utilize lead scoring and nurturing to qualify said leads before sales can do their job. According to Forrester, buyers might be anywhere from 75 to 90% of the way through their buying journey before they contact the vendor, after they’ve completed their own research. Keep this in mind when determining what point in the funnel sales should step in.
- Problem: I need to be able to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of my marketing team. To show the impact of your marketing team, you’ll need to plan out a strategy and determine what to measure, when to measure, and how to measure. Choose metrics that show how marketing is increasing effectiveness across the board, generating qualified leads, amplifying sales pipeline velocity, and improving sales and marketing alignment through leveraging lead generation software.
- Problem: My lead generation program isn’t working anymore. If your lead generation strategy has yet to catch up to the age of the self-directed buyer, it’s time to reevaluate. Using modern lead generation software can help leads find you by increasing brand visibility and capturing interest with informational content buyers can use during their own research before they’re ready to purchase.
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 page.
- 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, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.
Note: An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.) - Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.
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.
By the way, you should check out our free lead generation tool. It helps you create lead capture forms directly on your website. Plus, it’s really easy to set up.
Lead Generation Marketing
Once you put all of these elements together, you can use your 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 front-end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.
How lead generation works
There are two main components to the lead generation process: getting traffic to your site and then convincing them to share their contact information with you.
The first step of the process is finding an effective way to attract prospects to your website. Depending on your company’s goals and budgetary constraints, there are many ways to start attracting prospects to your site. The following are some of the key ways businesses use to drive traffic:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – SEM is a form of online advertising that involves paying search engines (such as Google or Bing) to display ads in their search results. Because search is the primary way people navigate the web, this can be a big source of traffic.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engine optimization is similar to SEM, in that it involves getting traffic from search engines, but rather than paying search engines for ads, SEO involves optimizing your website for search engine algorithms so that it appears higher in the organic search results.
- Social Media – Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have grown to become some of the most popular sites on the web, and are beginning to rival search as major sources of traffic. You can drive traffic from social networks by posting content to social media platforms or paying for ads that run on the networks.
- Display Ads – This type of advertising comes in various forms such as video, image, audio or text. These ads can be purchased on relevant websites in order to drive that traffic to your own site, usually via Pay-Per-Click (PPC) models.
- Offline Events – Online marketing can often begin offline. Events such as industry conferences and meetups can be good ways to network with potential new customers, inform them about your brand, and get them to your website. These can be events that you attend as a guest, events that you sponsor or events that you host yourself.
Once visitors start arriving to your site, the next step is to convert them into leads via an online form. This can be done in using many different lead generation tactics but involves getting users interested in your product or service and getting them to submit their contact info, often through the use of an incentive (known as a “lead magnet”).
Here are common marketing strategies businesses leverage to generate leads:
- Content – Providing high-quality content in exchange for contact information is a common practice in lead generation. This content can be anything from a white paper, case study or infographic to an ebook or exclusive video. The idea is to entice potential customers in your target audience with a piece of content that is relevant to your business and require them to provide their contact info before they can get access to the content.
- Webinars – A webinar is a live video session that your visitors can view and participate in. Webinars typically last between half an hour to an hour and provide information and educational material about a specific topic. Because webinars are interactive and require a big investment in time, they can be a great way to not only create a lead but also to educate and convert them.
- Landing Pages – The best lead generation tool of all is your product. If you have a compelling product that solves a major pain point, visitors will want to provide their contact information even without any incentives. Presenting your product in the most attractive way is often done through landing pages or sales pages, which help educate and convert prospective customers. Landing page optimization is the key to making sure you are getting the most out of these pages.
Once a lead is created, if the customer is in the target market, the lead becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and the digital marketing team will begin nurturing the lead via marketing campaigns. This nurturing process typically involves marketing automation campaigns to specific email lists to follow-up with content that helps to educate and persuade the prospects to eventually mature into sales leads.
After a lead has been nurtured, a prospect can be convinced to make an inbound purchase on the website or by reaching out to a salesperson, turning them into a sales qualified lead. In enterprise sales, it is often the sales team that reaches out to the prospect to close the deal.
Conclusion
Finding information about lead generation support definition can be a little tricky, especially since you may not be sure of the exact words you are looking for. Lead generation support is a term which is often used in marketing. It is often used in many different industries to refer to the acquisition of new customers, or leads as it is properly known.
Lead generation helps you build relationships with potential clients by educating them about your products and services, generating awareness about your brand, and even converting some into leads. However, it’s not easy to generate leads for your business. The process can be overwhelming for those who are new to lead generation .