- Where traditional marketing methods such as email blasts used to be enough to draw customers, the increase of competition and information abundance is making it more difficult for companies to track, reach, and engage with potential customers. Lead generation, the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline, allows companies to nurture targets until they’re ready to buy. Lead generation can be useful for any type or size of business, and for both B2C and B2B spaces. Sixty percent of marketers state that lead generation is a key pain point for their company. Determining a good lead is more complex than just targeting people who downloaded your white paper, and it’s important that your sales reps don’t waste their time cold calling unqualified leads when there are ways to narrow down the pool.
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The ROI of a successful lead generation program depends upon determining qualified leads and moving them along the sales funnel at their own pace. Lead generation drives content marketing. 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal (Ring Lead, 2017). Lead generation helps you to direct users to relevant content. Targeting users with content relevant to their position along the buying process yields 72% higher conversion rates. (Aberdeen) Lead generation can grow revenue in any size company. By building a lead generation strategy, we’ve seen mature companies achieve 133% greater revenue versus their plan than average companies, and 174% more than the least mature companies. Planning, implementing, and optimizing your lead generation programThe first step to developing a lead generation program is to determine what constitutes a good lead and making sure sales and marketing are on the same page. In just five steps, you could have your own lead generation program up and running.
| - Step 1: Define your leads. Start with the basics and determine what makes a good lead for your company. Leads can be defined in many ways, and there are even more ways to identify a qualified lead. For example, Marketo defines a qualified lead as “a prospect that is starting to exhibit buying behavior.” Then, use demographics, firmographics, and BANT (budget, authority, need, and time) to profile and segment your leads.
- Step 2: Align with sales. Just as sales and marketing must agree on the definition of a good lead, they must agree about when that lead gets directed to sales. If done correctly, this results in a seamless transition and immediate follow-up for qualified leads. To do this, sales and marketing must agree on two main categories of lead stages: marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs)
Step 3: Build your road map. Including inbound and outbound efforts. Step 4: Nurture and score your leads. It’s pretty easy to generate top-of-funnel (TOFU) leads, but since those leads aren’t ready to buy, it’s important to focus on middle-of-funnel (MOFU) leads. U
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