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Lead translated from English (to lead) means to lead, direct, lead. This term refers to a potential client who has left his contact information for further communication. This person (company) is to some extent interested in the goods/services offered by the seller. Lead in online marketing and sales has been an indispensable stage in promoting products on the market for the last few years.
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The concept (lead generation) is also inseparable - the search for leads, that is, potential clients who can become buyers. For this purpose, various marketing campaigns are being developed that gather a circle of people who are interested in the seller’s product. High-quality work with leads leads to the fact that the client becomes real and permanent from a potential one.
What does lead mean?
So, a lead is a potential client. But not every person interested in a product is a lead. For example, advertising of a new product is carried out - a new series of cosmetics. To do this, in a shopping center or in a place with a large flow of people, a stand with samples of goods and leaflets with their descriptions is installed. Sales consultants work. Their task is to attract the attention of passing people and interest them in the products. To do this, they talk about it, offer to test it, give brochures with information about the products in the series and other products of this brand. And everyone who comes up is asked to fill out a questionnaire, a form indicating their contact information, possible questions, and funds of interest. Some agree, some don't. Common situation?
Only those people who fill out the form and indicate contacts for further communication are considered leads. Those who simply stopped at the table, tested the products, but did not provide data, are not considered leads. And it’s not so important whether they buy the product themselves later in stores or prefer competitors’ products. It will not be possible to build work with them, since there is no contact information.
Sales lead and its types
The database of interested people collected in one way or another is transferred to the sales department and marketing specialists for further processing and generation of proposals. It is worth distinguishing two types of group samples of potential clients:
- Consumer - formed according to criteria such as age, income, gender and others. They can be transferred to different companies for targeted advertising about various groups of goods and services that, theoretically, may be of interest to them.
- Targeted – collection and transfer of contacts is carried out only by the company whose product the consumer is interested in (responded to).
Client's readiness for transaction
Leads are also classified according to other parameters: profitability, duration of the sales cycle, degree of warmth. The most frequently used parameter is warmth, that is, the client’s activity and mood to buy. Based on the degree of warmth, the following leads are distinguished:
- Cold – customers who have provided contact information, but know little about the products offered, are in no hurry to buy. For a successful transaction with such a client, you have to work hard. The possible number of contacts with him is not limited, and a positive result is not guaranteed.
- Warm – interested in purchasing, but have not made a final decision. They choose between products, brands, weigh the pros and cons of the purchase. It is required to provide more information to convince such a client of the advantages of the products offered.
- Hot – customers who want to buy a product. It remains to discuss minor details: payment, terms, delivery address, number of items...
The task of the head of the sales department is to distribute available leads among employees for further work with them. Marketers advise giving hot and warm clients to more experienced managers, so as not to spoil the upcoming deal and transfer the client to the regular section.
Lead collection channels
Sales leads also vary by acquisition channel. The most common:
- Clients who came through word of mouth are quite few in number in total. They are initially friendly and ready to buy. They arise due to the high professionalism of the company selling goods/services, good quality and uniqueness of the product.
- Network lead – obtained as a result of network marketing campaigns. The client may be interested in webinars, advertising, posts on social networks, access to information (courses, lessons, books, presentations...). Through the Internet, with well-organized activity, a large number of leads are attracted. However, customers’ readiness to actually purchase is low, organizational costs are high, and the required target sample is not always found.
- Large customers are the result of high-quality work of a sales manager. Attraction tools are selected individually for the client: personal meetings, presentations, development of commercial proposals, calls. The efforts are justified with large, corporate consumers. For small clients with low-cost goods, this is unprofitable.
All of the above types of leads are important for marketers. Word of mouth clients clearly show a portrait of a loyal client. This information allows the company to evaluate its product and its sales program. If necessary, adjustments are made. The ability to effectively work with a large and raw database of online leads is a skill of experienced salespeople. In working with these clients, theoretical knowledge is practiced and the qualifications of sales employees are improved. The ability to negotiate, make presentations, and overcome objections helps in attracting large clients.
How to get leads
There are many options, new ones are constantly appearing. The most effective include:
- creating an e-book is an opportunity for clients to gain new knowledge and skills;
- blogs and social media posts;
- email newsletters;
- webinars;
- additional offers upon purchase;
- distribution of flyers;
- online consultations;
These and other methods of attracting leads are selected based on the characteristics of the product and target audience, planned acquisition costs and other factors. Lead - what is it in marketing? This is an indicator of the success of the company’s chosen strategy for promoting the product on the market. Lead generation and analysis of the resulting database is the primary task of marketers in interaction with sales department employees.
What is a lead in advertising and internet marketing?
Various methods are good in attracting customers: advertising in the media, SEO optimization and other conventional or non-standard methods. A lead in advertising is essentially the result of efforts taken to find interested consumers. Companies (of which more and more are appearing on the market) offer lead generation as a result of a comprehensive marketing program.
There are two options for cooperation with customers of lead generation services, they differ in payment methods:
- payment for leads – formation of a database of potential clients;
- fee per action - takes into account the actions that the client has made (purchase, call, request for consultation...)
Lead generation stimulates sales and helps successfully promote goods and products to consumers. Finding a suitable target audience, forming effective samples from leads, maximum results with minimal costs of finance and time - this is an incomplete list of the advantages of lead generation. This customer interaction scheme is gaining popularity around the world in a variety of industries. Financial, insurance, medical, real estate and distribution services, online stores, car dealerships and other industries - quality leads will help make any business successful and efficient.
It moves forward relentlessly, and terms appear just as quickly with new sales formulas. Lead is one of the important terms in sales. This word describes potential customers who have responded in some way to a marketing communication. An example of a lead is very simple: a person who took a leaflet from an advertiser and filled out the flyer in which he indicated his contact information is a lead, since he responded to the advertising campaign.
This data is subsequently transferred to the sales departments and sorted in order to offer our own services, products and promotions in the future and make the potential client the main buyer. It turns out that leads are an integral part of product promotion, and without them it is impossible to increase your own sales, so let’s talk about this in more detail and look at the basic terms in lead marketing.
Sales leads
Leads are very important in sales, because, in essence, they are yours, the data of which you obtained using a variety of methods. The most frequently used of them, and at the same time the most effective:
- Phone calls (using ready-made scripts, and it doesn’t matter whether they are cold or hot calls).
- An application left on the site (if a person has filled out a table with his data, he automatically ends up in the so-called “sales funnel” and is saved in the database)
- Email newsletters (an effective way to reach a significant number of future leads in a short time)
- Distribution of flyers and advertising leaflets, because more than 10% will respond to the promotion and fill out a form that you can use for your own purposes.
As a result, such a lead in the future, receiving advertising mailings from you, can become a client and bring other leads with him through word of mouth. You can also use lead generation to obtain the necessary data from potential consumers and increase your sales.
Lead generation
With the help of lead generation, you can find additional clients based on your criteria and needs. For this purpose, special ones are used, for example, through search queries. Everything that a potential lead is interested in is collected and analyzed. In the future, this data will help to create a picture about him, which will give direction and show how it will be possible to work with the client, create special promotions for him and what to focus on. You can get information using lead generation in different ways, the most effective are listed below:
- Set up a business meeting. With eye contact, it is easiest to find out data and interest a person in products or services.
- Through online conferences and webinars. This method will help you capture a large number of leads at once and ultimately replenish your own base of potential clients.
- Through social networks, where you can also find out the information you need through correspondence. Create special advertising posts to attract people to the main group and subsequently subscribe, where through online correspondence and new advertising posts you will get your leads.
Based on last year's performance, the best lead generation metrics look like this:
- Organic;
- Various referral programs;
- Email marketing;
- Google Adwords.
But social networks took only fifth place in terms of the number of attracted leads, although in the future, along with the development of this part of the virtual space, this figure should increase. In fact, obtaining data from potential clients occupies a separate niche in the field of business and is called lead management.
Lead management
Obtaining personal data will bring an increase in sales, and in this section we will understand the difference between consumer leads and target leads. The first category is generated based on criteria such as:
- Creditworthiness (will give an idea about the client and tell you whether such a lead is suitable for you or not);
- Basic income;
- Age (using age, you can weed out an unnecessary category, for example, if you are only interested in leads under 35, the algorithm will help you select only clients according to your parameters).
Such leads are very often resold to various advertisers, and most likely, you yourself are such a lead if you have taken out a mortgage or taken out insurance at least once.
Targeted ones are specially generated leads that are compiled for the unique offer of an individual advertiser, that is, the client’s age, preferences and other factors that are needed for a specific advertising company are selected according to the request. The main difference is that targeted leads can only be sold to the advertiser if they respond to an advertising offer. So for each case, leads are generated separately and lead scoring will help you understand what type of clients you need.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is a special tool in marketing that shows how ready a potential client is to buy. This is done by analyzing and collecting so-called “points”, which are credited every time a lead responds to an advertisement and navigates to the site or views additional information about a product or offer. As a result, the system collects this data, analyzes it and, when a potential client is ready to make a purchase, offers a special offer or informs you about it, and you, using phone calls, directly contact the client and make a counter-offer.
The lead scoring algorithm should include not only the collection of usual criteria (contacts, position at work, company size), but also how the person responded to the advertising offer, whether he clicked on the link and went to the main site, or, when calling, answered answered questions and showed interest. In order to capture data from potential clients, a special niche in marketing is used and it is called lead capturing.
Lead capturing
You can obtain and replenish the lead contacts you need using various options. The most common options are:
- landing pages;
- pop-ups on websites;
- SMS sending;
- social media.
To improve their own capture and get as many leads as possible, experienced marketers adhere to some rules that bring more impressive gains in recruiting their own lead base.
- Sales tracking. This will help you correctly develop offers and at certain moments adjust them in time in order to increase your own sales and profit from one promotion.
- Turning guests into buyers. New customers are a key indicator of marketing effectiveness, which is why paid customer acquisition companies are highly valued and invested in.
The rapid development of SMM has confused many marketers and errors such as bias in one direction have appeared, for example, using only social networks when recruiting leads and promoting their own products. But as practice shows, it is better to invest in various areas, without stopping at one, but to combine the most effective methods for attracting potential buyers, which we discussed today.
In this material we will talk a little about leads and their generation. The term "lead
" is very new and, today, very puzzling to novice marketers.
A lead in Internet marketing is referred to as none other than a potential client who had the temerity to indicate his online coordinates when receiving an offer to sell any product or service. In principle, any user who has purchased something on the Internet is already potentially a lead, because the online store not only has its coordinates, but also, through the purchase log, can judge the user’s preferences.
In offline marketing, as in online, the concept of " lead" is also defined as a sales process, i.e. this is a special opportunity to sell this or that product to a potential client. Schematically, the process looks like this - a marketer collects data about potential clients and the collected database is transferred to the seller, who is directly involved in the sale of goods or services.
Thus, we see that the implementation of the idea of leads requires the participation of three parties - marketer, seller and, of course, consumer. The marketer performs the function of informing consumers about the product, and also strives with all his might to interest the latter in the need to make a purchase in the future. Coordinates are taken from interested parties, which are subsequently sent to the seller, whose goal is to competently sell the product.
As you can see, there is nothing complicated here and, I think, we can go deeper into the terminology.
Lead generation- the entire marketing process with the participation of leads;
Lead conversion- real sales and services provided through the use of lead generation technology.
Sales funnel- a visual expression that describes the technology in which leads go through all stages of generation and are converted into sales. The sales funnel includes such stages as, for example, obtaining data about the preferences of a potential client, his coordinates, the nature of the seller’s contacts with the potential client, etc. - right up to the final chord in the form of the conclusion of the transaction and the fact of sale.
Let's look at the main stages of the sales funnel
- Traffic generation.
Through this technology, a potential target audience is formed, which in the future can be attracted through various marketing campaigns. At this stage, the nature of the target audience and its size are determined.
-Leads
At this stage, the total number of potential customers who are interested in the product or service is formed. It is at this stage that contact information is collected and the marketer has the opportunity to draw up an approximate list of customer needs, based on personal data. This stage is also very important because it allows you to evaluate the quality of the advertising campaign for each offer separately (the number of leads will, of course, be different). Accordingly, it is already possible to judge the promotion budget in the future.
- Lead qualification.
This stage of the sales funnel allows you to directly determine which of the proposed products is interesting to each specific lead. This equally applies to the promotion of services. Most often, at the qualification stage, an agreement is reached on what the price of the product/service will be.
- Making a deal.
This stage is interesting not only because a sale is made, but also because the client becomes an adherent and is relegated to the category of old clients. Leading practice shows that the technology of retaining old customers is the most effective sales method compared to attracting new customers.
- Conversion.
A statistical stage that allows a marketer to judge the result of the work done. Expressed as a percentage. The marketer’s goal is to increase indicators and expand the bottom of the funnel, i.e. when all leads are converted into clients of the company.
In the future, we will publish several more materials in continuation of this topic - since the described method of marketing has become increasingly used on the Internet, it is advisable to consider it in terms of promoting competitive products. However, everything has its time! Stay tuned for updates!
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A lead is usually called a client who is interested in a product or service and has left his application on the website or filled out the registration form.
The term “lead generation,” despite its broad meaning in the field of marketing, primarily refers specifically to online promotion. If the site is not an online store where you can order and pay for goods online, then if it is not “tailored” for direct sales, it actually works to generate leads.A completed application, registration form, contacts left on the site by the client - this is the generated lead. Lead management is a general global process for managing and working with leads. The way you then manage the received data: call, arrange delivery, make a sale, send out advertising letters, and so on - this is lead management, that is, lead management. Lead management as a process consists of several stages.
One of the most significant and interesting for us (and we, as site owners, are interested in effective sales) is lead generation
We prepare special selling pages and commercial offers on the website, attract traffic to them - from social networks, search engines, and buy advertising. A lot of people come, and those who are really interested in our offer become potential buyers. They fill out the form, submit an application and become a lead. Next comes the work of lead management - lead management. Our task is to competently and accurately use the information received and lead the client to a purchase. We get in touch and discuss the terms of the deal.If for some reason the client is not ready to make a purchase right now, we enter his contacts into the deferred demand database and continue to periodically inform him via mailing about our promotions, call him, stimulate demand - that is, we maintain communication and unobtrusively “loom on the horizon” . Lead management should lead to one goal - sales.
A variety of tools are used for this: deferred demand, secondary sales, up-sell technology (offering the same lead a product at a higher price or more expensive than he was originally going to buy); cross-sell technology (offer of related products).
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