Lead generation to attract potential buyers

Every day the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular platform for business development. Even if a few years ago a stably operating offline business did not think about moving online, today the situation has changed dramatically. Almost every company has its own representative office online: both large and small, those who are just starting their journey in the market and those who have been working for quite a long time. The fact is that it is convenient for potential buyers to get acquainted with goods and services online. They don’t have to go shopping, spend time and money on travel.

That is, having your own website — Many people know this necessity of our time. But it’s not enough to create a quality resource. It is still necessary to make it work, to attract the target audience. And here we come to the term lead generation. The essence of this technology is that a business can gain a user base that will subsequently place orders for goods or services.

Now let’s look in more detail at how lead generation works and what a lead is in marketing and sales. Let’s take a closer look at the types of leads and the criteria for assessing their readiness to make a purchase. Let's consider the main methods of lead generation that any Internet marketer can use in practice. We will also tell you how to increase the efficiency of your online work in attracting leads, without the risk of running into a ban from anti-fraud systems.

How does lead generation work?

We have already said that lead generation — this is attracting visitors to the company’s website from search engines, social networks, advertising banners, etc. It turns out that there is some kind of landing page with the information that users were looking for. This may also include information about promotional conditions and special offers. This landing page will also contain an application form for ordering a product, service, call back, or the company’s contact phone number.

It turns out that a user who is interested in this information will perform one or another targeted action — call and fill out the form. Thanks to this, a business representative receives a lead — that is, contacts of a potential customer. This process is called lead generation or, as marketers most often call it — lead generation. The data obtained can subsequently be used by company managers for further communication with potential buyers, thereby stimulating them to make a purchase.

That is, attracting an audience to the site — this is only one part of lead generation. Yes, this way you can get visits to the site, but there is no possibility of subsequent communication with potential clients, warming them up. Sales managers will not be able to contact such people. This means that the opportunity to generate income may be missed. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to stimulate lead generation.

To understand how to work in this direction in the future, you need to clearly understand what a lead is and its position in marketing as a whole. So, lead — This is a user who has shown interest in your company’s product or service, leaving his contact information for communication. So, it could be:

• filling out a standard order form on the website;
• request a commercial offer or estimate by email;
• providing data when filling out an application for consultation;
• registration on the site;
• subscribe to the newsletter;
• registration of demo access to a product, service, registration for a test lesson;
• sending a message to an online chat, etc.

This can be any other action that involves the voluntary provision of personal contact information. But here you need to understand that in a particular area of business, a different set of data may be relevant. So, for example, in the b2C sphere (providing goods and services of everyday demand), a business representative will only need to have at his disposal the simplest set of personal data: telephone number or email address. If we are talking about a b2b business, then you will need to have reliable data about the user himself and the company for which he works. So, here you need to know what position this or that person holds, or what role he plays in the company, the industry itself and the scale of the business, the need for the product, the total number of employees and even points of sale. Without such data, you will not be able to add such a lead to your business sales.

Main types of leads

In any case, you must understand that the lead — This is only part of the life cycle of converting your website visitor into a buyer. Additionally, there are several lead classifications. Now let's look at 2 key varieties:

1. Upon readiness to purchase a product or service.
2. By qualification.

Main types of leads based on readiness to purchase a product or service

Degree of “warm-up” Lida — one of the most important factors in marketing. It is by this that one judges how ready a person is to make a purchase. The following categories are distinguished:

• «Cold». This category includes people who are still at the starting point of the sales cycle. It is assumed that they have absolutely no knowledge of the company or the products or services it provides. Moreover, they are not at all interested in purchasing these products and are not particularly ready to respond to the marketing initiatives of business representatives. To bring such clients to the idea of the need to make a purchase, you will have to put in a lot of effort, and in some cases, even time.
• "Warm". These are users who are interested in those goods or services produced or sold by your company. But they may not yet know about the brand itself. A manifestation of their interest can be the pressure of comments or likes on social networks, filling out a feedback form on the website, granting permission to send emails, etc. That is, with the right support from the marketing department, there is a high probability that the purchase will still be completed. And here the task of specialists – learn more about the requests of potential clients, their pain points and offer the most effective way to solve the problem.
• «Hot». These are the people who are at the very bottom of the sales funnel. That is, they are already ready to purchase a product or service. And here the task of a business representative, be it a marketer or a sales department, is to lead a person to pay for a product or service. That is, at this stage, people no longer need to explain all the advantages of your company, or the product or service itself. You just need to help him make a purchase.

As you can see, when working with each of these categories of leads you will have to put in different efforts. Yes, people who are in the “hot leads” group — This is the dream of any business, but, alas, there are only a few of them. You need to work with the rest, show your interest, highlight the advantages of your business and gradually accompany them until the decision to make a purchase is made.

Main varieties of species by qualification

In this case, we are talking about collecting additional information about potential clients, which will help assess how ready a person is to make a purchase. There are 6 categories here:

1. Information Qualified Lead. In this case, we are talking about “cold leads” who are ready to provide their contact information to the manager in exchange for useful information. They will have minimal priority directly in sales. Often, all their interest will end after they receive the desired data.
2. Marketing Qualified Lead. These are already “warm leads” who can be classified as potential clients. That is, they are interested in your product or service, but at this stage they are not yet ready to buy it. Their actions are often interrupted at some point in the interaction. That is, they show interest, give their contacts, but do not go further along the sales chain. And here a marketer must work to help a person make a purchase. Consultations, provision of free samples, additional discounts, and email newsletters can be effective here. As soon as such a client is ready to make a purchase, everything is transferred to the sales department.
3. Sales Accepted Lead. If a potential buyer has already been qualified by the marketing department and transferred for further service to the sales department, then this will be a lead from this category. Such a person demonstrates his interest in a product or service and the matter remains small — accompany him until the purchase is made.
4. Sales Qualified Lead. This category features hot leads who have already confirmed their previous qualifications. That is, these are already those with whom you can work directly in terms of sales. The transition between the previous and this category is quite blurry. And here it is very important not to miss the moment when a person may have doubts. In this case, it is better to further stimulate him to make a purchase, namely, offer an additional discount, provide more information, perhaps a free sample, etc.
5. Product Qualified Lead. Here we are talking about those individuals who are already using your products. But in this case we are talking about samples, free or limited versions. In this case, they can be offered a paid product in its full version with additional functions and updates. For this category of people, it is important to convey information about what benefits they will receive in practice from using the advanced solution.
6. Service Qualified Lead. In this case, we are talking about leads who themselves contacted the technical support service, managers and reported that they wanted to receive more detailed advice regarding goods or services.

The overall strategy of working with him and, accordingly, the effectiveness of your activities will depend on how correctly you assign a person to a particular category of leads. Correct and comprehensive approach — this is minimizing time and effort, reducing the sales cycle and increasing their number.

Features of lead generation

Modern Internet marketing offers a fairly wide variety of lead generation methods. But initially you need to understand which category of leads you are dealing with. That is, it is important for you to assess what the potential for closing a deal will be with this or that person and what level of income you will receive if you attract him to your site. So, to determine the quality of leads, it is important to pay attention to which company this or that user came to you from.

Here you need to estimate the size, number of employees, sales volume. You also need to understand what powers the person you are working with will have. Will he be able to make the final purchase decision? And when working with leads, you need to find out whether you are able to 100% satisfy their requests. If it turns out that your proposal does not solve the problem, then the person will have no motivation to get to the bottom sales funnels, which means that all your efforts will go down the drain. You should also estimate how long it will take you to get the user to make a purchase. By assessing all these parameters, you will be able to prioritize among potential clients, which will significantly increase the efficiency of your work.

Only upon completion of these preparatory work will it be possible to proceed directly to generating leads. Here you can use:

• Search engines. This option is suitable for all business representatives who have their own website and a specialist involved in its SEO optimization. The basis of all work in this case will involve the compilation of semantic core, as well as adjusting all content available on the resource taking into account high- and low-frequency queries. In this case, you will need to bring your website to the top of search results, which will help improve organic traffic and, as a result, brand visibility on the network.
• Affiliate programs. In terms of efficiency, this method of lead generation is not inferior to work through search engines. But the problem is that placing your advertising banners, links to the article site on partner resources, or using their databases for electronic mailing will be paid. That is, there is an effect, but you will have to pay commissions to partners for each completed transaction, impression or even click.
• Social networks. Today, almost every Internet user has his own account on one or another social network, messenger or other hosting. So you can safely use Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Telegram in order to publish interesting and high-quality content there that will attract potential clients. But here, too, it is important not to overdo it: it will be enough to choose 1-3 channels for work and attract leads through your nickname.
• Own blog. By regularly posting really useful and high-quality information on your site's blog, you can present yourself as an authority in a certain field. This means that users will be happy to visit your resource, third-party websites, and link to your materials, which will also improve organic traffic. But here, too, it is advisable not to forget about SEO.
• Electronic newsletter. This is a fairly effective way to expand your customer base and, accordingly, increase sales volumes. By putting this type of lead generation into action, you can find out the person’s name, his email address, city of residence, and get acquainted with behavioral factors, in particular whether he opens letters sent to him. The last factor will allow you to determine the level of interest of a potential client in a particular product or service. Also, with the help of an email newsletter, it will be convenient for you to accompany the client throughout the entire cooperation, thereby transferring him from the category of user to buyer.
• Retargeting. If it happens that a person did not complete the target action on your website, this is not a reason to discard him from the lead category. If he initially clicked on a link or another targeted action, it means that he is still interested in your products or services to some extent. Therefore, you need to try to change your approach to it. Perhaps you can try offering additional discounts, bonuses for purchases, free product demos, etc.
• Trials. It's about generating leads with free trials. Invite a person to use your product in exchange for their opinion. Thanks to feedback, you will get real feedback about your products, which will allow you to make improvements if necessary. Moreover, if a person tries your product and finds that it satisfies him, he will buy it in the future.

TOP 3 trends for lead generation

Not so long ago, the only methods of lead generation were advertising on television and banners in print. But today, Internet marketing technologies have stepped far forward. And different methods can be used to implement them in practice. The most effective solutions are:

1. Connecting a chatbot to your business. This is a special program that will simulate a conversation between a manager and a user through correspondence. The duties of such a bot will include getting to know the potential client’s question and redirecting it to the appropriate section of the site. The bot will also be able to systematically guide the user to make a purchase, recommend a particular product, tariff plan, offer to use a demo version, etc. The main advantage of this solution is that bots will instantly respond to user requests, regardless of the time of day, workload, etc. That is, this will significantly increase the efficiency of customer service for a real manager; the bot will transfer a person only when its algorithm does not have the tools to solve the task.
2. Influence marketing. This category presents everything that can increase brand awareness and loyalty to the target audience. All this is achieved thanks to the additional involvement of opinion leaders in the work. That is, you need to find a famous person, optimally a blogger, who works in the same niche as you and invite him to advertise your product or service. Thanks to this, you can improve brand awareness and strengthen trust in it, show how to properly use that product or service. The more popular the blogger whose services you use is, the larger the target audience you will be able to reach within the project. In addition, this is the easiest way to increase the number of subscribers on social networks.
3. Video marketing. This is an option for those who would like to increase brand awareness, identify the client’s pain as accurately as possible and offer a solution, provide detailed information about the product or service, and features of use. There are a lot of options for presenting information today. You just need to navigate such offers and choose the one that will be most optimal for your goods or services. This way you can significantly increase engagement and increase reach.

To summarize

Now that you know what a lead is, what types it comes in, what technologies and tools should be used for lead generation, you can proceed directly to developing a strategy and putting it into practice. But we would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that any multi-threaded actions on the network (and without them you will not be able to complete this work) will be identified by the system and blocked. All this can lead to the fact that all your efforts will be nullified. Moreover, there is a possibility that all those accounts from which the activities will be carried out will be banned.

To prevent this from happening, to ensure that lead generation work is as efficient, stable and productive as possible, we recommend that you additionally connect mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service to your work. Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to learn more about the functionality of this product , current prices, available geolocations. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can purchase mobile proxies for any period of time convenient for you, starting from 1 day and up to 1 year. In any case, the renewal will be as simple, fast and convenient as possible. But, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the longer the purchase period, the cheaper it will be to use the product for one day. Also pay attention to the current tariffs for a particular region. If any difficulties arise and additional advice is required, contact the technical support service managers at a time convenient for you.

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