The term ‘lead’ refers to any person who shows that they are interested in an organisation’s product or service. Leads usually hear from a business or an organisation after they open communication (by sending in personal information for an offer, trial or – alternatively – a subscription) as opposed to receiving a random cold call from an individuals who bought their contact information.
Here’s an example of lead generation in action:
If you, for instance, take an online survey to discover more about the best way in which to take care of your car. A couple of hours later, you get an email from the auto company that designed the survey about how they could assist you with taking care of your motor vehicle.
This procedure is far less intrusive as opposed to if they’d merely called you for no reason with no knowledge of if you even care about car maintenance. From a business perspective, the information the car company collects about you, from your survey responses, assist them with personalising that opening communication in order to address your existing problems — and not waste time calling leads who aren’t at all interested in at all in their services.
Leads are part of the wider life cycle which consumers follow when they go from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they qualified the same). There are different types of leads according to how they are qualified and what life cycle stage they’re in.
What is lead generation?
‘Lead generation’ is the method of attracting leads (in other words, your potential customers) into a contact management or digital marketing software system. When this information has been captured into this system, the idea is to nurture these leads throughout the buying process in order to assist with convincing them about your offerings and, after this, converting them into a paying customer.
The lead generation strategies, which are used in digital marketing in order to generate these contacts, are put in place by your organisation to ensure that your leads are quality as well as worth nurturing for future revenue-generation capabilities. Lead generation is all about developing trust with your audience, educating them regarding your industry as well as offerings along the way.