Lead-based Marketing

What Is a Lead in Marketing?

From generating to converting, you’re probably well aware that leads are an important part of marketing and the overall customer life cycle. But you could be wondering what are leads in marketing? Simply defined, leads in marketing refer to any individual or organization within your marketing reach who has interacted with your brand way or has the potential to become a future customer. A lead can be someone that sees or downloads your content, signs up for a trial, or visits your store. 

Channels for lead generation:

For lead generation, the first requirement is to establish contact with potential customers and encourage them to provide personal data.
Interested parties are encouraged to provide their contact information by downloading an e-book, subscribing to a newsletter, or signing up for a webinar.

Once collected, this customer data can subsequently be used to set up relevant campaigns or passed on to the sales department. For sales, this offers the considerable advantage that these are no longer “cold contacts” but have become qualified prospects who have expressed their interest.

Before leads can be successfully generated, several steps are usually necessary. The first challenge is to attract the attention of your target persons and gain their trust. Companies use several online channels and procedures for this purpose:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Advertising
• Social Media
• Landing Pages
• Banner advertising
• Online PR

Trade shows and conferences are also effective tools for lead generation, and affiliate marketing is a further method of generating leads. Participants in affiliate programs often receive a ‘fee per lead’, which means a commission per prospective contact acquired (for example, based on registrations or downloads).

Lead generation through content:

The use of relevant content is essential to generate high-quality leads. Rather than rushing in like a bull at a gate, it’s important to generate interest in the company’s products via quality content. Furthermore, it’s important to provide the right content to prospective buyers at the right contact points (touchpoints).

Lead marketing is also about accompanying your prospects along their customer journey. So it is important to develop a relationship with your potential customer before making any kind of sales contact.

Though each customer journey may be slightly different, this pathway can be roughly divided into certain phases. According to the well-known AIDA marketing formula, these correspond to: Attention – Interest – Desire – Action.

  • Awareness: the customer’s awareness of a need
  • Consideration: deciding to move on/evaluating the worth
  • Decision: making the purchase

During the ‘information research’ phase, the consumer needs to be addressed differently because he is yet to make a purchase decision. A keyword search can be used to identify and gather common search queries the user may employ, and you can then capture his attention with blog articles and videos offering solutions and illustrating product advantages.

Marketing qualified leads

It’s important to differentiate between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads (SQLs). MQLs are people who have shown a curiosity about your brand and products, whereas SQLs are people who have indicated that they are ready to make a purchase of your product or service. It is important for marketers to understand the difference between MQLs and SQLs so that they create communications for the former specifically that won’t risk overwhelming the contact and scaring them off before they make a purchase. 

Depending on how a company’s marketing and sales departments are structured, when MQLs are identified, they might be passed along to the sales department for further communication directly from them. In other companies, other qualifications might be needed in order to pass an MQL onto an SQL, like fitting a customer persona or taking a specific journey through the website. 

Marketing departments typically create a lead scoring system to help them determine the quality of a lead. Knowing the quality of a lead can help a marketing team know how likely a lead is to convert into a sales qualified lead and can help the marketer offer the right kind of communication to continue to nurture the lead down the funnel.

Difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead

It’s important to differentiate between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads (SQLs). MQLs are people who have shown a curiosity about your brand and products, whereas SQLs are people who have indicated that they are ready to make a purchase of your product or service. It is important for marketers to understand the difference between MQLs and SQLs so that they create communications for the former specifically that won’t risk overwhelming the contact and scaring them off before they make a purchase. 

Depending on how a company’s marketing and sales departments are structured, when MQLs are identified, they might be passed along to the sales department for further communication directly from them. In other companies, other qualifications might be needed in order to pass an MQL onto an SQL, like fitting a customer persona or taking a specific journey through the website. 

Marketing departments typically create a lead scoring system to help them determine the quality of a lead. Knowing the quality of a lead can help a marketing team know how likely a lead is to convert into a sales qualified lead and can help the marketer offer the right kind of communication to continue to nurture the lead down the funnel.