Afton Aschaker
Lead Generation – What Is It?
Generating new business leads online can seem like a large topic to broach, there are many strategic avenues, targeting options, and tools that can be used to capture the right leads. Over the years, digital marketing has become more and more prominent in marketing strategies for all industries, and with the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing it is clear online lead generation will be here for years to come. Let’s dive into the types of online lead generation marketing, defining leads, how online lead generation works, and the benefits of online lead generation.
Defining a Lead
Let’s start with defining what a lead is and the different types of internet leads that can be generated. Leads are anyone who expresses interest in your company’s service or product offering. This could be through a content offer, signup form, or many other marketing activities.
Now, let’s take a step further. There are marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) that fall under the larger ‘lead’ category. MQLs are leads who have indicated their interest in your company’s offerings by interacting with your marketing efforts. This could be through a content download, starting a free trial, or adding items to a shopping cart, among many other things. MQLs fit the target audience of your marketing efforts and are likely to become customers. SQLs are leads that your sales team has interacted with and has qualified as a high-quality potential customer. These leads are typically past the research stage, they know what they need and are ready to purchase. SQLs are actively moving through your sales funnel and the sales team is nurturing them to move them towards a purchase or closed deal.
Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing
To understand online leads and how to generate them, we also need to understand the two main types of marketing. There’s inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Both get you high-quality leads if approached correctly, one takes a little bit more time and manpower to complete while the other works for you. Inbound marketing helps you attract customers by aligning your service offerings or products with the consumer’s needs. Curated content is provided to the consumer to showcase your product or service and help them through the awareness and consideration stages all the way to conversion and beyond. Inbound marketing tends to be more timely, as it allows new leads to come to you instead of the other way around.
Outbound marketing is the more traditional form of marketing that most people think of when they hear about marketing. In outbound marketing, the sales team initiates the conversation with potential customers. If not approached carefully, this form of marketing can lead to reaching leads at the wrong time in their journey or missing opportunities. Common examples of outbound marketing include cold calling or cold emailing, billboards, mailers, tradeshows, or event sponsorships.
How Online Lead Generation Works
Now that we understand the different lead types and marketing approaches, let’s dive into the online lead generation process. With online marketing lead generation, you can skip the cold calling and instead spend your time connecting with high-quality leads who have already interacted with your business and expressed interest.
In its simplest form, online lead generation follows the below process:
- Discovery: A consumer has a problem and are looking for a solution. They are aware of the problem and are researching their options. They begin their search online and discover a company that claims to have the solution for their problem.
- Website Visit: Upon visiting the website, they learn more about the company and the product/service they offer. The landing page they visit has a call to action (CTA) that the company wants visitors to take if they are interested in learning more about their offer. These offerings could be a starter guide, a subscription to a newsletter, a downloadable checklist, and more.
- Engage in CTA: They decide to take action and learn more about the company’s solution to their problem, so they submit the form on the page. The form collects their general contact information and more information about what the consumer is looking for.
- Begin Nurture/Sales Process: After the lead generation form has been submitted the data is stored in a CRM and the lead continues into the nurture and sales process.
Common online marketing lead generation strategies include:
- Paid Media
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Outreach
- Blogs
- Free Trials
- Newsletters
- Webinars/Events
- White papers
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
- Email Automation/Drip Series
- and more
Utilizing digital marketing tactics can help turn your website into your number one lead generator.
The Benefits of Online Lead Generation
There are quite a few benefits to online lead generation. Starting with the reduced need for outbound lead generation, which saves you time and money, and can allow you to focus on the leads that truly make a difference for your business. Online lead generation also contributes to a higher level of brand awareness and recognition due to its ability to provide marketing messages at the right place and time. Leads tend to be higher quality due to the higher level of targeting and proper timing of marketing touchpoints. And finally, online lead generation can help produce new leads for you while you focus on moving qualified leads down the funnel, instead of taking your time find leads.
Generate Leads, Then Close the Loop
So, you’ve generated leads. Now what? Just generating leads and working to close them isn’t enough. Qualify leads and improve on their quality with the help of closed-loop reporting. Closed-loop reporting takes the leads that are generated and follows them through the entire marketing and sales process to the point of closing. It helps us learn what campaigns, targeting, and audiences are the most successful, where to focus marketing efforts and where to pull back to generate the most return. When we combine lead generation tactics with closed-loop reporting we can improve targeting, messaging, and overall campaign performance to help reach new goals and improve ROI.