What do we understand by lead generation?

Lead generation is understood to be the marketing process of initiating and capturing the interest of a buyer in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline.

More often than not, a Lead generation makes use of digital mediums to seek out the right buyers following the massive upsurge in internet usage across the globe. The increased usage of social media has resulted in an abundance of information that is rightly used both by the seller as well as the buyer. Thus, the online space has proven itself to be a worthy field to pursue sales leads and market a range of products and services.

Why do you need lead generation?

 

Over time, the buying process has completely evolved, particularly in the online sphere. Everyone who’s anyone wants to sell his product to the billions of internet users as online marketing tends to offer fantastic returns on a minimal budget. However, this has also led to overcrowding and businesses need to find refreshing ways of reaching out to their potential customers. Thus, instead of falling back on the hit-and-miss processes like mass messages and e-mails, businesses must make efforts to zero in on their actual customer with increased precision. The average buyer of today is already suffused with an overload of information and has adapted to willfully ignoring the messages that are not interesting to him. He’s instead proactively searching and researching things that he’s actually interested in and is looking forward to purchase.

Lead Generation: Then vs. Now

Previously, lead generation merely meant finding the data of potential buyers and pushing it over to the sales department to pursue further. The sales reps then had to talk to those potential buyers and educate and inform them about the product or service in the offing. Today, however, all of this has changed. Buyers are now proactively researching online in a host of resources like blogs, social media posts, and search engines and possess thorough information about the product or service that they’re interested in even before they speak to an actual sales rep. Thus, it is imperative that businesses build a formidable and reliable online presence to captivate its potential customers.

What is a qualified lead?

For any business to flourish, it needs a customer. Not just any customer, but a customer harboring a need which will be fulfilled by the business.

A qualified lead, by its definition, is a person who by any means has shown interest in your product or service. These means of showing interest would include clicking on your product’s advertisement while browsing the net, filling up an online survey or a form that’s related to your service, liking your post on social media, or even reading a blog written to showcase your service offerings.

This is followed by the same person clicking on the call-to-action (CTA) button on your page, which could be in the form of an image or a short message. This action takes the person on to a landing page – a page specifically curated to register the contact details of the individual. Here, the person interested in your product or service leaves his contact details in exchange for obtaining more information about the concerned product. This way, the person validates his interest in being an actual customer for your particular offering.

This is an organic way of generating sales leads since it sifts through the volume of customers to zero in on the ones who are most interested in that particular offering. Thus, when these customers receive calls regarding the offering, they are naturally more eager and receptive to what the speakers have to say. These pre-counseled leads are then turned over to the sales reps of the respective businesses, who gladly convert them into actual customers.

In our next blog of this series on Lead Generation, we’ll be covering the actual process of how to qualify a lead. At GladOwl, we offer the full bouquet of lead generation services across businesses. Our in-house expertise includes design, content, web development, and digital marketing to create a full-length marketing sprint which ensures only the best leads get delivered to your doorstep.