In many competitive sectors, finding and recruiting potential customers is an ongoing priority. The rapid growth of digital technologies is multiplying not only the opportunities for contact, but also the ways of attracting and then converting a visitor into a buyer. Would you like to understand everything there is to know about generating lead, but don't know where to start? Our guide will make it easy for you to master the various terms and techniques involved. We have a second article on the best techniques for generating leads.
What is a lead in marketing?
In digital marketing, a lead simply refers to a sales contact, i.e. a person potentially interested in your company's products or services.
Unlike a prospect, the lead is an identified contact. It follows a sales proposal or upstream canvassing.
A qualified lead customer typically belongs to your brand's target audience. They are highly receptive to the added value of your offer and your advertising message.
There are several types of leads:
- lead is the most interesting category for the company. It includes all contacts showing a direct interest in the company's offer. This can take the form of various initiatives, such as subscribing to a newsletter or downloading a product catalog.
- The lead informational contact is someone actively seeking information about your industry or the type of products/services you offer. This contact is not necessarily focused on your offer, but can be easily converted if their attention is caught at the right moment.
- Lastly, the lead disqualified is a contact deemed irrelevant for various reasons: profile not suited to the company's offer, insufficient income, etc. Disqualifying this lead simply means not approaching them for a sales proposal.
By classifying contacts, it is possible to build a marketing strategy tailored to each category of lead. Companies have every interest in concentrating their efforts on people who are potentially interested in their products or services.
What does lead generation involve?
lead, also known as " lead generation " or " lead gen ", refers to all marketing techniques and strategies aimed at recruiting leads. The aim is to obtain the identity and/or contact details of people who have expressed an interest in the company's products and services, or more generally in this type of product.
The main priority of a lead gen strategy is to attract as many visitors as possible to your website, mobile app or even directly to your store.
Good to know: A technique at the crossroads of digital and physical channels
Lead generation is not restricted to the Internet and dematerialized exchanges. More traditional techniques can also be used to recruit potential customers (mailbox advertising, in-store contact request forms, etc.).
Generating leads is a challenge shared by all companies. Whether you're a small business, a medium-sized enterprise, a major corporation or a freelancer, lead generation is designed for both B2B and B2C players.
Why implement a strategy to generate lead ?
A company's sales performance and long-term economic viability depend directly on good lead generation. Implementing an efficient lead generation strategy is a must:
- To recruit new customers, please visit GDPR;
- To automate contact prospecting and devote the time saved to higher value-added tasks;
- To develop brand visibility and awareness;
- To optimize natural referencing, by publishing relevant and unique content;
- To stand out from the competition.
A lead generation strategy has certain advantages over other marketing techniques:
- Thanks to its very fine targeting capability, it can be carried out at a very competitive cost compared to campaigns with a more massive audience, such as television.
- It is characterized by a high conversion rate. Qualified leads are high-potential prospects: the likelihood of a first purchase is high, as is the likelihood of loyalty, or even of a transformation into a genuine brand ambassador.
On the other hand, a good lead gen strategy also means :
- Defining a dedicated advertising budget ;
- The need for constant reassessment in the light of results achieved ;
- Mastery of various marketing levers such as SEO, content writing, e-mailing, performance marketing and lead nurturing;
- The risk of generating false leads. These could, for example, be students or competitors doing research, with no desire to buy the products.
Good to know: What elements boost the performance of a lead nurturing strategy?
lead nurturing is based on maintaining or strengthening a commercial relationship with prospects who are not yet mature enough to make a purchase. This marketing strategy owes its success to :
- Good contact management ;
- Lead segmentation ;
- Customize actions to suit each stage of the buying process.
What are the different techniques for generating leads?
To generate leads, we need to distinguish between two main families of techniques.
inbound marketing
inbound marketing involves attracting visitors by increasing brand visibility and awareness. The strategy can be based on a variety of techniques:
- Search engine optimization(SEO);
- Publication of quality content that meets the expectations of web users (white papers, ebooks, articles, etc.);
- E-mailing campaigns via the CRM database ;
- Regular updates on the brand's social networks;
- Co-registration. This technique consists of proposing a subscription or complementary offer when subscribing to a service. It makes it possible to collect opt-in e-mail addresses, without asking the surfer to fill in a new form.
The lead generation process consists of four stages:
- Grab visitors' attention and captivate them on your website or blog;
- Convert visitors into leads by encouraging them to take action: submit their contact details, fill in a form, etc. To guide them, consider using landing pages linked to coherent call-to-actions (CTAs);
- Turn leads into customers using lead nurturing techniques;
- Turn customers into brand ambassadors .
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing consists of reaching lead qualified customers by financing paid campaigns. This involves broadcasting targeted ads via the main online advertising networks:
- Prospecting e-mailing or SMS marketing campaigns;
- Paid search, or SEA, via Google Ads;
- Social selling on social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.
How can we go further in qualifying lead ?
lead scoring, a method used to assign a score to leads
lead scoring is a technique that automatically assigns a score to each lead. It is based on marketing automation. This strategy makes it possible to measure the conversion potential of leads, their degree of appetence for the product/service, or their position in the purchasing path. Lead ranking is an excellent way of targeting the most promising contacts.
Good to know: How does marketing automation work?
Marketing automation means using software or programs to automate time-consuming and repetitive marketing tasks. The aim is to achieve better operational performance while optimizing revenues.
The score of a lead can be calculated from :
- The characteristics of the contact present in the CRM: size, company, responsibility, sector of activity, postal address, age, etc;
- Its behavior: type of request, visit to a website, a booth, participation in a conference, downloading a white paper, signing up for a free trial ;
- Predictive analysis, based on machine learning.
MQL and SQL: distinguishing between the two concepts
Within the lead qualification cycle, or " lead cycle", a new contact generally passes through two distinct stages:
- A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL ) or lead marketing is a contact who has shown an interest in your products or services (newsletter registration, account creation...), but whose needs are still unclear. Qualified through a marketing action, the MQL has provided the company with their contact details beforehand.
- A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead who has already provided you with enough information to make him/her eligible for a concrete sales proposal. Finally, an SQL is an MQL who has reached a certain level of maturity. In the conversion tunnel, a lead doesn't always pass through the MQL stage. It can be a SQL directly. In this case, the contact has been established from the outset by the sales department, without going through the marketing department.
The benefits of lead qualification
In the corporate world, lead qualification is a daily challenge. In addition to marketing campaigns on social networks, by e-mail, SMS or on Google Ads, the marketing department has to deal with a constant influx of leads, more or less qualified.
These come from the company's website or listing on Google, generating in-store traffic. With so many contacts, it's hard to know which ones are likely to become long-term customers. That's why qualification plays a crucial role.
Qualifying leads allows you to :
- Reach more people in less time while optimizing your conversion rate;
- Be guaranteed to capture the attention of leads whose needs match the goods and services you offer;
- Attract only qualified leads, since these are targeted contacts. They have arrived on your website or blog following a specific search.
If you ignore lead qualification, you run the risk of :
- Wasting time with contacts whose profile is not compatible with that of your core target;
- Miss out on opportunities by focusing on leads that aren't the most valuable;
- Conclude short-term collaborations rather than focus on building long-term relationships;
- Limit the performance and effectiveness of your lead generation actions.
Entrust your lead generation to specialized experts
Do you want to collect leads from your core target audience? Trust Dataventure to design and deliver your customized, qualified lead generation campaign.
Our strengths :
- We take charge of your campaign from A to Z. We advise you from campaign creation to optimization and distribution. Our solutions are tailored to your acquisition cost objectives;
- Customized management of lead tracking and delivery. CSV, FTP deposit, webservice... We deliver qualified leads according to your requirements;
- Wide range of associated services: Performance e-mailing, Display, Premium co-registration, SMS Marketing; ...
- Prospect billing. We guarantee total control of your acquisition model.
Dataventureis :
- 2,000,000 leads generated every month;
- 2,000 campaigns managed ;
- 100M profiles opt-in in Europe;
- A network of 1,000 partner publishers;
- Prestigious customers: Peugeot, Pandora, L'Express, Grazia, Ipsos, Norauto and many others.
Do you have a qualified lead generation project in mind? Would you like to enter into a win-win partnership focused on your ROI? Contact us now! An expert Dataventure will get back to you in less than an hour.
