LEAD – What Is a Lead And What Is It Used For?

What is a lead and what is it used for?

The term lead is a concept widely used today by both agencies and marketing professionals and companies. Leads increase their presence and importance with the entry of digitization in marketing, being an essential factor in almost any online marketing strategy that seeks to increase the level of sales. However, the lead does not always fulfill its function of offering direct results if it is not used correctly. So today we are going to see what a marketing lead is (or a marketing lead) and what it is used for.

Lead definition

• The word Lead is acquired from English and its literal translation means to lead. The term Lead in english, although it shares that characteristic of directing towards the sale, is understood more as a request for information about a product or service. I think the best answer or definition would be the potential customer. Among marketers, we also refer to leads as conversions. In short, a potential client, who has shown interest and transferred his contact details (name, telephone, email, or how far you want to go) to a company.
• Lead is a term that is used to refer to an opportunity or prospect that has been achieved thanks to the fact that the user has been directed to the objective. This is so because the lead has allowed us to obtain the data of the individual who has entered any of our spaces on the Internet (blog, page, etc.). These data are revealing since they indicate that said individual is interested in something that we have even if we don’t know what it is about. Why have you really given us your email? Are you really interested in what we offer or have you only done it to take advantage of the incentive we offer for giving your email? Will you be a potential client who will end up acquiring our services/products? In principle, it is not possible to find the answers to these questions through a lead. Once we have captured the user’s attention to answer these questions, we must take action.
• In marketing, a lead is usually placed in a strategic position when detecting the interest of a visitor, although later that lead will have to be nurtured to encourage the visitor to buy the product that is the final objective. The success of this action will depend on the way of nurturing the lead.
• To give an example, every time a user leaves their data through Google, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc., a lead is generated.
• The concepts of lead and conversion are closely related: every time there is a lead, a conversion occurs. The Internet is the most important lead capture channel because it allows us to know who, when, and how the conversion has taken place. Digital marketing, well done, allows us to measure and know what price we are paying for a lead (CPL) and if it then manages to close a sale. In this regard, it is necessary to know that there are also different ways of producing leads or achieving conversions.

Types of leads: good and bad quality leads

Within the information requests generated, differences can be found between qualified leads (hot leads) or unskilled leads. The difference is in the quality or the real interest that the user shows and the probability that the subsequent sale will materialize. To determine which category the request belongs to is the conversion percentage understood as the number of sales produced among the number of leads generated per hundred.

A good tactic to improve the quality of a leader is to increase the information that the user has before requesting information or to increase the form fields so that only those who are really interested fill in.

As anyone interested or who works in the world of marketing knows, measurement is becoming more accurate and there are more tools to assess quality, leading to prediction through data analysis and big data. It is here when we find the term lead scoring.

Lead scoring

Within lead management, it consists of establishing the probability of conversion to sale of an information request based on a history and predictive algorithms of automatic qualification. It is usually used in large companies with great capacity to generate conversions and in many cases they need to assign a score to prioritize monitoring or determine which online marketing channels are most effective in optimizing resources and efforts.

This does not mean that the lead with the least probability of becoming a sale should be discarded. These can be matured or improved through lead nurturing strategies that make the user carry out new actions or interact until reaching the final objective. Lead nurturing can be understood as the process of preparing those users who are not yet ready to purchase with valuable information. You can use email marketing strategies, marketing automation, retargeting, etc.

How can leads and conversions be generated?

We already understand the definitions of lead and conversion and their qualification. The next thing to ask yourself is how to generate leads or what is lead generation. There are digital marketing tools and tactics such as Google Adwords, the services of an SEM agency, a good well-implemented SEO strategy, or the appropriate use of advertising on social networks.

The fundamental thing, in any case, is a good definition of the marketing objectives that you want to obtain and to have a method that allows real monitoring.

To increase leads, whether you dedicate yourself to educational marketing, the sale of tourist products, the  promotion of sporting events, fashion marketing or any sector there are always some common points to keep in mind:

Landing page

Almost any digital marketing campaign aims at a landing page where the user can expand their information about the product or service. The usual thing is to provide information that generates interest in the user (the more information they have, the higher the quality of the lead) but that is not completely complete and leads to the need to get in touch to collect all the data. Therefore, the contact form that is capable of attracting the information of the user-directed through our campaigns is essential.

Every landing page must be created based on the digital marketing strategy and thought based on your objectives, we are talking about optimizing landing pages for conversion.

Keys to a good landing page: 

• Focused on our objective and not that of the user Attractive title.
• Concordance with the campaign and your creativity (colors, images, copies …)
• Responsive landing. It must adapt to any device, traffic is increasingly mobile.
• Lead capture form. The fewer number of fields, the greater the conversion.
• Give something in exchange for your data: PDFs, ebooks …
• Images, videos, and testimonials that support us and build trust.
• Product or service benefits. What sets us apart from the competition?
• Feeling of offer or unique opportunity.
• Call to action. What do you want the user to do on your landing page? Tell her!

Also Read: How have live chatbots turned beneficial for online businesses?

Give something in return

In order for the user to leave their data voluntarily, they must obtain something in exchange. It may be the simple need for information, but if we are able to offer you something “free” we will see how our conversion increases. Some examples are participation in a contest, an ebook, or access to certain content. It is essential that in exchange for a lead, we offer quality, for example, creating good content on our website.

Lead capture channels

All this is great, we already know what a lead is and what we need on the landing to get it, but where am I going to look for it? There are many digital marketing channels that allow you to create campaigns focused on the conversion or achievement of leads. Among them we can find:

• SEO positioning
• Content marketing
• Inbound marketing
• E-mailing or Email marketing
• SEM Positioning or Search Engine Marketing

                         Search network campaigns

                         Display

                         Remarketing

                         Youtube Ads

                         Gmail Ads

• RTB or Programmatic purchase of advertising space
• Social Media Marketing

                         Facebook Ads

                         Twitter Ads

                         Linkedin Ads

• Agreements and directories with payment to CPL
• Affiliate Marketing

Deal of the lead: Closing the sale.

Voucher. We know what a lead is, how to qualify them, how and where to get them, but the most important thing is missing … Converting leads for sale!

Depending on the type of business or company we are in, we must follow one strategy or another. We are going to focus on the most common, the treatment from a call center. That is, the tactic Lead contact sale.

• Act quickly. Do not let lead cool down or you will lose the sales opportunity. Think that if a user is interested in your product or service, they will surely also be visiting competitors. Being the first is essential.
• Contact better by phone.
• Establish a monitoring system.
• Analyze the information. What hours or what days are the most pointers?
• Establish and hold your care accountable. Who is in charge of dealing with potential clients?
• Remember that behind the lead is a person. Be nice and talk.
• Confirm your needs.
• Insist but do not overwhelm. It is possible that you cannot contact the first one or that you are busy, do not throw in the towel.
• Make personalized offers. Reserve an acquisition margin or CPA to be able to offer what the client really needs.
• Take note and learn for future contacts.

conclusion

In short, a lead can become the best asset of a company or project, so focusing on getting leads is a way of working for the future of that company or project.

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