Terrific Facts To Learn All About Leads
Imagine you have accompanied your colleagues to a French restaurant, and the menu is full of fusion dishes. But note: some recipes are to be avoided unless you are French. Since you are unaware of this fact, what will be its consequence, if you had ordered from one of those by mistake. The dish appears, surprise… and your expression goes “OMG”. Have we ordered the correct dish? The look appears to be so disturbing? What may be the ingredients? So many questions.
Similarly if your customer is checking on ABC product/service, but you deliver XYZ product/service, they too go either blank or shall give rise to different questions/opinions like above. Hence you don’t nurture your customers, your competitors will. Same way, closing leads perfectly, opens up long-term relationships.Both statements are two sides of the same coin. But the point is, on what principles do leads work? Are you still thinking or confused? Please don’t try to do guess work, stop here!! The trick to this magic is here.
Hey People welcome back!! Now that you have understood what is lead generation and its importance in the previous article, let’s go in-detail and absorb the art to build a strong and engaging customer relationships by developing new customers and keeping them come back to you.
Let’s take a deep-drive and study each segment one-by-one.
The Creative Channels Of Lead Generation
About 63% of B2B marketers today also, consider lead generation as one of the most challenging platform. As there is so much information available online, day-by-day it’s getting difficult to figure out which is genuine and which is not.
In simple term, yes lead generation seems to be pretty simple, but it’s not. Why? Here’s the simple answer to it…
Example 1: you visit a conference of 75 people, once the program gets over, interact and request the visitors to share their e-mail id’s , this is one form of generating leads.
Example 2: A visitor sign-ups and fills the form on your contact us page, by doing this action too leads to lead generation.
It’s not over here, but as mentioned above these examples seems to be very simple, the art is to make them happen. How? Calculate knowledge of this business. With 2 channels of lead generation get aware of who you want to target and then showcase them the value of your product/service in broad term.
Inbound Lead Generation vs. Outbound Lead Generation both of these aim in generating leads for your business.
But the mode of working is slight different. How? Continue reading…
Outbound Lead Generation
The mode to reach your target audience starts with purchasing lead lists, and then contacting them. Use of cold calling, e-mails, billboards, print ads, television ads, and radio ads, etc… All of this requires high budget, media connections, ability to perform as much as marketing possible on a go and more off to present appealing pitch.
Pitch - The energy you add in your content to attract your target audience to buy.
Inbound Lead Generation
The mode to reach your target audience starts with attracting online planned content that you have created for website or a blog, then optimize it for online search via SEO techniques. Here the budget is comparatively less but time spend is more. When your content gets noticeable and begins to attract your readers/visitors, they become your leads.
SEO (search engine optimization) - The content has all relevant keywords, and answers to all the questions the audience is looking for.
Are you looking for a tool to manage inbound and outbound lead here’s one for you… Hubspot a free tool - to organize, track and nurture your sale leads.
Let’s move on…. and get to learn more on how to classify leads for B2B.
Classify leads for B2B
Different companies have different sets of terms, that they have assigned to classify leads, but basically leads are classified into 3 main categories in the marketing funnel. Which are those? check them out…
Information Qualified Lead (IQL) - The Stage 1
These leads are towards the start of the buyer’s journey. Here the organization should provide relevant information as to what the buyer is asking for in exchange of his/her personal info (name, email address, location etc…) Usually this type of marketing lead is also called a cold lead.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) - The Stage 2
These leads are towards the middle of the sales funnel. The buyer here shows certain interest in your product/service. But there is no sufficient data to analyze their level of interest. The marketing team takes over the lead, builds and nurtures it. This type of lead is also called a warm lead.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) - The Stage - 3
This lead belongs to the bottom of the sales funnel. The lead is now handed over to the sales team. As the lead has been determined by both marketing as well as sales team, it moves to the next stage, i.e…“Direct sales”. The buyer express their desire to make a purchase. It is called a hot lead.
Specifically online marketers, will summarize the advantage of warm and qualified leads over cold leads. Some question you need to be clear on, to understand this…What are warm and qualified leads?
How do they work for online marketers? And Why are they better than cold leads?
Cold Leads
A simple way to understand cold leads is, when you receive a call from an insurance company while enjoying your dinner. He explains all his requirements, and asks you to sign up for one of their offerings. But you show no interest and get annoyed. This is a clear NO hence it is referred as cold lead. Almost no chance for lead to get clicked.
Warm Leads
Whereas warm lead is where the buyer shows liking in a product or service. May be by following your company on social media platforms, sign-up to your email newsletter, could be your previous client or some other channel. These lead are much more valuable than the cold leads. But you can still not rely whether it shall close or not.
Qualified Leads
High chance of lead getting closed. Instance, a visitor does a Google search for a specific product or service. This is a qualified lead since their need has brought them to go online and search for a company like yours. Make yourself visible via search engines. For that you should accurately and continuously perform SEO and PPC advertising. Hence the more you know all about your prospects the higher are the chances to closing a deal. In turn also makes you aware if they are potential customers or just tire kickers.
Moreover there are stages for lead to get qualified and this Methodology is called as BANT.
After classifying leads, let’s quickly learn how to generate them.
6 Effective Ways To Generate Sales Leads Online
“People who think differently solve problems in a smarter way, than, people who think alike”. As the saying goes generation of leads is more effective by doing so. How? Know here…
Content marketing
Create content with prime aim of providing pure knowledge. There are various formats you can express your thoughts like blogs, info-graphics, videos, case studies, white papers, etc…
Social media
The next crucial platform is social-media. According to your business requirements, utilize the channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are more for B2C; whereas LinkedIn is compulsory for B2B.
Email A one-on-one conversation with your recipient. Share a blog post, invite them for a webinar, update them about your product or just offer a discount.
Webinars This is a perfect lead generation act. The webinars usually ask customers to share their email ID or contact details. Timely webinars, with current topics and great quality speakers, can build a brand awareness of your business.
PPC (pay-per-click) ads Pay-per-click an interesting activity wherein the visitor clicks on a PPC ad and it drives them to xyz landing page. Here the lead gets captured. PPC ads fetches great results because, they contain niche keywords, and also they appear on page, one of Google.
Display ads
Display ads also called as banner ads. In simple words they are as print ads for digital. CTA (call-to-action), illustrations and animation are attracting elements in display ads.
Source of Lead
From Where - To Where your lead is following as per Google analytics:
- Direct: the lead types your URL, or bookmarks your site.
- Organic: lead seeks you from organic search results.
- Social: lead reaches on your website from social networks platforms.
- Email: lead clicks a link from email and gets redirected to your website.
- Affiliates: lead that rises from an affiliate marketer’s website.
- Referral: lead is “referred”, lead comes from another website to your website.
- Paid search: lead clicks on you from PPC (pay-per-click) ads in search results.
- Other: lead comes from online advertising, like cost-per-view, video ads.
- Display: lead discovers you from display ads.
Measure Success Of Your Leads
As very correctly quoted by Peter Drucker, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Metrics makes it easy to determine the success and progress of your lead generation efforts as well as rectify is required. Follow the below metric to MAKE MORE MONEY.
Click-through-rate (CTR)
How well are you moving along your funnel? The formula to calculate CTR is
CTR = TOTAL NO OF SALES / TOTAL NO OF VISITORS * 100
Follow this formula for websites, landing pages, PPC ads and as well as email campaigns.
Conversion Rate (CR)
A calculation of how many visitors are making purchases or filling a form etc… The formula to calculate conversion rate
CR = TOTAL NUMBER OF SALES / NUMBER OF NEW VISITORS * 100
Example of conversions are visitors to leads, leads to sales, sales to close.
Time to Conversion (TTC)
As the name says, the time that takes to convert a visitor into a verified potential lead.The formula to calculate time to conversion
TOTAL TIME SPEND BY ALL VISITORS/ THE TOTAL NUMBER OF LEADS
By maintain a track record, you will be in a position to accurately calculate your sale cycle length. Hence you can plan as per your sales pipeline, to hit your revenue mark.
Cost-per-click (CPC)
While running digital marketing campaigns on platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads you should keep a check on the cost. Formula to calculate cost-per-click
CPC = ADVERTIZING COST/ CLICKS
Lower the CPC, the better. But if you are able to generate more revenue out of leads, then even if the CPC is higher it’s perfectly ok.
Cost-per-lead (CPL)
The average amount you spend in gaining a lead. Formula to calculate cost-per-lead
CPL = AMOUNT SPEND ON CAPTURING LEADS/ TOTAL NUMBER OF LEADS CAPTURED
Return-on-investment (ROI)
Most pivotal metric. Formula to calculate return-on-investment
ROI = PROFIT OR LOSS FROM EACH LEAD / INITIAL INVESTMENT * 100
Lead Management
Last but the most complicated segment is, to learn lead management. The toughest factor about lead generation is deciding the relevancy of your lead.
Signups could be from your visitor or even competitors (trying to test your product). Yes indeed both are leads, but off-course you will not do any business with them if you get to know it’s your competitor. But to know that, first learn the art to separate and manage leads. How? Enter lead management now…
Lead management is a mixture of several things.
The right tool to store your leads. There’s absolute no point in generating a torrent of leads if you manually can’t view them all, in one place. Here are some best tools to manage.
Next step is to nurture every lead.
Last step, get your lead ranked on basics of: how much or how little they are engaging with your business to determine which the hottest leads are.
Presenting to you, the three most crucial elements of lead management:
CRM software
In the past years, businesses have tried using several tools for managing leads, like the rolodex, contact management software and spreadsheets, etc…But there is a common performance by these. The main function works like a system of record. Past few years business are understanding importance of new CRM software (customer relationship management software)
Here every lead gets their own profile. This profile contains demographic details, as well as a chronological list of each and every conversation the lead had with your business including data/documents you’ve ever shared with them. Guess what this is just one part of what CRM software can do. Isn’t it amazing? List of best CRM tools for every business.
Nurturing a lead
A detailed, careful and consistent process. Communicate with the lead, and convert them into your customer. Every interaction of yours, will take you one step closer to close lead and promote your business.
Qualifying a lead
Imagine you have xyz number of leads. Each lead is engaged with your business in different ways. These leads are in different stages of your sales funnel. It’s practically not possible to take a deep glance at every lead and recollect how close or far are they to your business.
But this is possible if you use a lead scoring technology. Lead scoring is a system by which you set parameters to qualify or score a lead in the CRM. Adding a score on leads reduces the risk of decision-making in terms of which lead you should contact first and which not.
All these 3 steps, we will be covering in much more detail in our upcoming articles, so stay tuned for it…
Conclusion
If the strategy for generating leads does not work then make some changes in your plan, not in your goal. Pay keen attention to every stage right from planning, to allocating required resources, budgeting, as all this will make you stand apart from your competitors.
Lead generation - a learning to earring journey. How? Learn in our next upcoming article the process of Lead Generation - a process you need to believe in it, before you see it!!
The harder and higher the process, the best will be view after that climb. Till then practice these essential steps and lets us know your thoughts and experiences on this… Like, Share, Comment…..
