Lead generation is one of the most important tasks for any company that wants to increase its sales. To convert a sales contact into a lead, you must put in place appropriate initiatives that will lead them to act.
In this article, our experts at Eminence explain to you what you should do to generate qualified sales contacts to feed your company’s sales force.
What is a qualified lead?
A qualified lead, also called Marketing Qualified Lead or MQL, is a person who expresses interest in the product or service of a company and submits his personal information to get an offer, a trial, or a subscription for example. At this stage, they are not necessarily ready to receive a commercial call. An example of a qualified lead is a contact who has filled out a landing page form for an offer, without making a purchase.
How to identify a qualified lead?
– The nurturing cycle:
To follow the nurturing process that can lead to a qualified contract, it is important to define the different stages of lead qualification. These steps begin as soon as the lead has provided information, usually an email address. At this stage, he is at the entrance of the conversion funnel, and his real interest in your offer is not yet clearly defined.
If the lead performs actions that confirm his interest in your offer by returning to the site several times or signing up for the newsletter, for example, he will be defined as a Marketing Qualified Lead. At this stage, he is in the middle of the conversion funnel and these positive signals encourage further qualification actions, like sending invitations to events or webinars.
If the lead is sufficiently qualified, its data is transmitted to the sales team that, based on the information collected in the CRM, examines whether or not he can become a confirmed prospect and represent a business opportunity. These validated leads are subject to in-depth qualification work and direct commercial actions, such as establishing telephone contact. If the qualified lead accepts the commercial offer, he will become your customer.
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– Segment leads
Given the multitude of contacts you collect, you might not be able to create a personalized message for each of them to meet their specific needs. The solution lies in segmentation. A segment is a group of prospects sharing a certain number of characteristics and to whom you can address the same messages.
Depending on the goods or services you offer and the information you collect, segmentation can be based on:
- Geographic location
- Company size
- Sector of activity
– Prioritize leads with a scoring system:
After having clearly defined the qualification path and segmentation, you have to create a scoring system to calculate the progression of leads throughout the conversion funnel.
Thus, several points will be attributed according to the action performed by the lead. For example, downloading a white paper will be equivalent to 10 points and a conversation with a chatbot to 20 points. In addition, so-called “level” scores must be defined, indicating for example the transition from a simple lead to MQL at XY number of points.
– Track lead qualification data:
The data collected and the exchanges with your leads can change at any time, depending on the competition or company trends. Your lead qualification actions must therefore be constantly adapted, to accurately and quickly identify any new requests or expectations. For this, increased monitoring of your CRM data is essential to constantly adjust the segmentation or scoring scale.
Do you want to implement a successful marketing strategy to achieve your business objectives?
Steps to generate a qualified lead
1. Establish your buyer persona:
Before you start promoting your product to your customers, it is crucial to know as precisely as possible who is likely to buy your products or services. To do this, you need to create buyer personas.
Buyer personas are imaginary and stereotyped customers who represent your ideal target and for whom you will adapt your inbound marketing actions. They are built from socio-demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data following customer feedback or market research. For example:
- Age
- Education level
- Interests
- Purchasing behaviors
2. Create a relevant content strategy:
The second step is to bring visitors to your site with relevant content that will interest them. Depending on your persona’s expectations and content preferences, you can produce blog posts, videos, or podcasts.
Once your content is in place, the next step is to make sure your customers can find it. To do this, you need to define the search terms your potential buyers are using to find solutions to their problems. Traffic growth depends on using the right generic and long-tail keywords, which will improve SEO.
→ Do you want to implement a successful content strategy
3. Improve your site’s conversion:
The conversion rate is the percentage of internet users who have performed a specific action on the site, such as downloading informative content or a coupon in exchange for providing personal data. Your site should therefore include interactive spaces of different formats with content that will appeal to your audience such as forms, internal links, a Chatbot on the homepage, etc.
4. Implement a marketing automation strategy:
Marketing automation involves automated marketing campaigns triggered by user actions on your site. For example, sending an automatic reminder email a few hours after starting and then abandoning a shopping cart on an e-commerce site. These campaigns contribute to lead nurturing, a process that stimulates leads to mature and take action.
Related : → E-commerce: why do you need Marketing Automation?
5. Use social networks:
Social networks have a great potential to identify and address directly to a targeted clientele. The choice of the social network depends on your offer and your target.
Then, promote your products or services and reinforce your brand image through sponsored posts or collaborations with influencers close to your brand values. Interactions with your community will give you essential information about their expectations and needs, which will help you refine your personas even more.
→ Are you interested in a Social Media approach?
6. Use CTAs and lead magnets:
Call-to-actions or CTAs are images, buttons, or messages that invite site visitors to perform a specific action, thus triggering the lead conversion. They can be found on the website, in follow-up emails or newsletters, and also on social networks.
Lead magnets are also used to attract the attention of visitors by offering attractive elements on a landing page. These lead magnets must be of sufficient value to the visitor to get them to share their contact information if they want to benefit from them. An example of a frequently used lead magnet is a coupon for a 5% or 10% discount on the condition that they sign up for the site’s newsletter.
The fundamentals of lead generation are now crystal clear. If you need help or support in implementing your lead strategy, please contact Eminence.