Almost all of us have faced this or something similar. Imagine treating yourself with the first bite of a delicious chicken burger after a hectic day and the phone starts ringing. You are welcomed by this familiar voice of none other than a telemarketer who starts off by greeting you and then moves on the most important question, “This is regarding the new telephone plans.”
The whole purpose of writing this was to discuss inbound lead generation in detail. So, that you do not end up being that company who is majorly known for making boring, interrupting cold calls that everyone hates. Let’s understand this one by one to know the entire concept in detail:
Lead – A lead can be defined as a potential sales contact, which can be an individual or an organization having interest in your goods and services. It isn’t that typical cold call which makes no sense to you, rather you get to know about someone with whom you have already had communication with. For e.g. a vendor at a jewellery fair or exhibition trying to catch the attention of the prospective customers. Hence, every time someone enquires about more info regarding the vendor, it could mean a new lead. The efforts by the company towards getting leads can make or break their success.
Lead Generation – It is a marketing process through which we attract or try to capture the interest of potential prospects who would warm up and eventually turn into buyers. It is a very effective method and used across the world for better results.
Need for lead generation – Now that you have applied the lead generation techniques, the individual or organization has initiated or taken that very important first step that implies their natural interest towards your product or service. Simultaneously you also try to form a good bond with them. This makes it easier for the individual or company to finally become a buyer.
Qualifying as a lead – So the way to generate leads is through information collection. Below discussed are some ways which make them qualify as a lead:
- We share a lot of personal information while applying for a job. This assures one that due to these info one stands a better chance. Since, you have taken out time and filled the form shows that the person is genuinely interested in the job. This automatically qualifies him as a lead.
- Content say for e.g. webinar, ebook etc cannot show direct interest like a coupon. Thus, you might require more information to better understand the customer’s interest.
- This might not have a lot of info but yet if someone has taken out time to share his name and email address on your online coupons that shows the interest of the person in your company.
Generating Leads – Following are the components of lead generation:
- Landing page is a web page on which a visitor visits for a certain reason. Though it can be used for various purposes, it is frequently used to attract leads.
- Forms are mainly a series of fields that collect information.
- Offer can be better defined as content on the landing page that has enough value to capture the interest of the customer who willingly shares his/her information in exchange.
- Now coming to CTA or call-to-action which is in the form of a button, an image or message. This calls the visitors to take some action. In this case, it could be to redeem the offer or fill the form etc.
All these components, when put together, can be used on various promotional channels to drive traffic and link to the landing page which can in turn help in start generating leads.
Buying Leads – It is true that, it can be tempting for salespeople and marketers to buy leads rather than generating it. It is easier and less time consuming despite the fact that they are really expensive. That’s where the temptation to buy leads comes in. So why shouldn’t you just buy leads?
To start with, the leads bought by you are completely unknown. They don’t know you. They never came searching for you. So, messages sent to them are unwanted and that in other words means being intrusive. Since they have not indicated an interest in your product, service etc or visited your website, then it is real simple- you are interrupting. Hence, by not opting to receive your messages has increased the chances of it being labeled as spam. This can be really scar. If by any chance it reaches the black list, it is very difficult to get out of it. This also harms your IP reputation and email deliverability. So, opt for generating and not buying leads.
