Lead generation - what is it?

Clients often come to my agency for marketing and lead generation services, and, unfortunately, each of them by the term lead generation means a different meaning and understanding of what it is.

Internet marketing professionals may also call the agency business model of working on leads (Leadgen). And all this confusion in our heads generates a lot of questions, which I'm tired of answering:)

Let's get to the bottom of it. Pour the coffee and let's get started.

What is lead generation in simple words?

This term refers to the process of attracting leads to a particular business. Any business. How else could it be? After all, everyone needs leads: both online and offline businesses, from food delivery companies to marketers themselves.

Every business has lead generation, but the ways to get leads can vary depending on the niche, transaction cycle, or other features of the business.

The lead generation process consists of 2 steps: getting traffic and then processing it. This includes finding leads through various marketing techniques and then selling the product or service.

Marketing tactics are different - inbound and outbound. In the first case, the leads are attracted by organizing the incoming flow of leads and different methods are used: SEO, placing contextual advertising or targeting, holding events and participation in them, various webinars, seminars and exhibitions, etc.

Outbound flow can be called the organization of a call center for cold calls, distribution of leaflets, banners and other activities.

The ultimate goal of lead generation is the sale of certain goods and services, as well as the formation and continuous increase in the customer base.

To generate the incoming stream of leads, there is a special funnel of lead generation - from finding the client and heating up his interest in the product, to the final sale through various methods.

For example, a person sees an ad urging them to sign up for a mailing list with discounts and/or a free bonus. The lead subscribes, receives a bonus and then once or twice a week receives a series of newsletters or promotional emails with various promotions, discounts and more. Until the moment when he will not buy the product. After the purchase, he begins to receive a different series of letters - already as a customer. This is the autofunnel of lead generation, or sales funnel in general sense.

The tool itself is a lead-magnet, a tool that gives out a bonus in exchange for contacts.

What are leads?

Leads are contacts of representatives of the target audience who can turn into customers.

Leads are users who have completed the following steps:

• left a purchase request;
• Have registered on the site;
• left an email in any pop-up window;
• subscribed to a mailing list in any messenger or by mail;
• signed up for a trial period;
• repeat customers;
• other visitors who have taken any action on the site.

The leads are divided according to their interest in the product or service. Someone mildly interested and went to the site just out of curiosity, others came to get useful material or a bonus, to get acquainted with the site, but they have not yet ready to buy the product. Or, conversely, the user is already interested in buying.

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Classification of leads

Leads are divided into several types:

1. Cold. Those who were not going to buy anything, but left their contacts by chance or for the sake of interest. Such contacts are interested in the product in potential, but they need more time to make a purchasing decision.
2. Warm. Leads who already have an idea about the product or a particular company, chatting, asking questions and requesting some information about it.
3. Hot. Leads who are ready to buy the product already. They are satisfied with the price, the terms, and all that needs to be done is to help them purchase the product or service.

Each of the types of leads needs careful thought and a specific approach. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a marketing strategy for each group individually.

Important! The more thoroughly the steps in the sales funnel and lead warming up in it are developed and tested, the higher is the conversion into a sale/lead.

Sources of traffic for lead generation

Sources of traffic for leadgen come in a variety of forms. These are:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) website promotion. To get to the top of the PS, you need a multi-page site with the ability to optimize it. No one-page lendings. Search engine traffic is most desirable because it reflects the natural interest of users and is inexpensive. You should also be careful when choosing a constructor for the development of the site: its advantage, which lies in the speed and cheapness, can be leveled by the lack of functionality for optimization for search engines.
• Contextual advertising. This type of advertising is shown to the user by the relevant query, which he entered. For example, "buy sneakers. "Yandex" and "Google" in this case, give a bunch of sites where you can buy sneakers. Show contextual advertising may be in search engines, websites, mobile applications.
• Targeted advertising. Translated from English, target - a target. It is not difficult to guess that such advertising is aimed at a particular audience, which can be filtered according to different parameters. The latter determine the customer's business goals and features of its CA. Such advertising is used in social networks - VK and Odnoklassniki. Do not forget about the fast-growing TikTok. Keep in mind temporarily blocked Facebook* and Instagram* (* Facebook and Instagram belong to Meta, a company recognized as an extremist organization in Russia).
• Buy ready leads. Buy leads from lead generators - companies that supply ready-made leads. The latter, as a rule, use all or part of the above methods of lead generation.

Where to start building the process

Customer lead generation requires careful thought and the right approach. To do so, the following steps must be followed:

• Product definition. The first and foremost step on the way to defining the product is to use a Value Proposition Canvas. It is important to understand who your target audience is, what kind of pains and problems they have, what exactly the company can offer and correlate all that with each other. It is also important to study up and down the proposed product. Know not only its advantages, but also its disadvantages, and compare it with the competitors and their own product range. Understand how they sell.
• Building a sales funnel. Competent construction of the funnel facilitates the organization of work with buyers at all stages of preparation, up to the final implementation of the deal. It is based on the legendary scheme AIDA: Attention - attracting attention, Interest - awakening interest, Desire - desire, Action - active action on the part of the client. It looks like this: the lead sees the ad - visits the site - sends a request - pays for the order. The main function of the funnel is transparent statistics in the business and its improvement. It is also a great way to find flaws in business processes: whether advertising is set up properly, how the sales department works, how convenient all the services are - you can see everything at once.
• UTP. A unique selling proposition is the most important factor when choosing a company. SCC is a specific proposal, hitting the customer's pain (clearly, concretely and clearly expressed, with numbers). Free and fast shipping is certainly a big plus, but it can't claim to be "unique." "The package you get in 1 night, or free pizza for 40 minutes late." - Now that's a TOC. With numbers and specifics.
• Implementation of TOC on landing pages for traffic, development of advertising campaigns, preparing scripts for sales departments.
• Testing of sources of traffic. It is important not to get hung up on one channel and to constantly test. So, for example, if for one business is perfect for cold calling, for another excellent solution will be contextual advertising. Also, you should not use all methods of marketing at the same time. It is important to distribute the budget smoothly and control each source of traffic, its efficiency and ROMI.
• Analytics. Understand what causes deal rejection. It is necessary to build measurable indicators at all stages of the funnel. For analytics, you can use various end-to-end analytics services and / or data from the CRM. At the lead processing stage, analyze the conversion indicators from lead to order and closed orders. It will be clear at what stage to work to increase.

Depending on the results of analytics need to engage in warming up the stages of the funnel. Warming up consists of the following steps:

• present the value of the product;
• demonstrate your expertise in this area;
• Identify your target audience's pain;
• to offer a solution;
• sell the idea;
• transform the result;
• close the objection;
• and, in the end, close the deal.

Hot demand is needed in the "here and now" moment, and any warm-up tool - a mailing list or chatbot - is needed for those who are just looking for some information and are not ready to buy now. Mailing lists and additional touches can warm up a user's interest and encourage them to buy a product or service over time.

Testing traffic sources helps to identify the most effective channels to generate leads. The data obtained helps the marketer understand which source is best suited for attracting the target audience for each particular business.

Source: www.bondarsvideo.com