A Beginner’s Guide to Lead Generation, What is lead gen, Types of leads, Important, Process, Strategies, sales and marketing qualified lead and more here is in-depth feed-back.
We updated this article in July 2020 for accuracy and completeness.
Are you curious about lead generation?
Would you like to know key definitions, tactics, and what a good lead generation process looks like?
So stick with us and read this beginner's guide to lead generation.
Table Of Contents of Beginner's Guide to Lead Generation
What is a lead
What is lead generation
Why is lead generation important
Lead generation process
Types of leads in lead generation:
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
Identifying which leads are sales or marketing qualified
Lead scoring – a joint marketing and sales strategy
Lead generation strategies:
- Create gated content
- Build landing pages and optimize them for conversions
- Drive traffic to your landing pages through paid ads
- Use lead ads to simplify the opt-in process
- Host an online event
- Add calls to action
Lead generation marketing – your first steps
What is a Lead
Let's start by defining what a lead is.
A lead is someone who has shown interest in your offer(s) and provided you with their contact information so that you can continue the conversation, such as by email or phone.
Keep in mind that each company, marketer, or salesperson may have their own definition of what a lead is or what makes a lead good.
What is lead generation
Lead generation refers to the process of attracting people not yet in your database, convincing them to provide you with their contact information, and guiding them through the buying process until they are ready to talk to your sales team and/or make a purchase.
Editor's note: Looking for an easier way to generate leads? With all the built-in tools and integrations, GetResponse is the only lead generation software you'll ever need. Go ahead and learn more!
Why lead generation is important
To survive, your business needs leads.
Even if you have a large sales team constantly contacting potential customers on LinkedIn or Facebook, growing your business can be difficult.
In the past, consumers contacted sellers to find out more about the products or services they were interested in.
Many consumers these days choose to do their own research - they check review sites, community forums, social media, or test the product themselves if a free trial is available.
The answer to this current reality is to establish a reliable lead generation process. If you have one, you can grow your customer database in a cost-effective and scalable way.
Lead generation process
In a nutshell, a lead generation process breaks down into four steps:
1. First, you need to capture a stranger’s attention and get them to visit your landing page or a website.
You can do this, for example, via a Facebook Ad or an engaging post on social media.
2. Next, you’ll want to convince your website visitors to provide you with their contact details.
You can do this by offering your visitors a piece of content that they can access after filling out a form on your landing page. Marketers refer to this as a lead magnet.
3. After the visitor fills out the form – and thus has become a lead – you’ll need to nurture them with your marketing communication until they’re ready to buy your product or service.
Usually, you’ll do this through a mix of channels, mainly email, webinars, paid ads, and in-app notifications.
4. Once your lead is ready to buy your product or service, you can direct them to a page where they’ll be able to place their order or pass them onto your sales team.
Of course, the buyer's journey doesn't end there. Even if you've made a sale, you'll want to continue to engage your customers and turn them into loyal brand advocates.
This process is done primarily through the use of marketing automation and is part of a larger concept, often referred to as lifecycle marketing. And while the process we share may seem simple, marketers often find lead generation problematic.
Types of leads in lead generation
As you can imagine, not all leads are the same.
We distinguish several types of leads according to their level of qualification and the stage of the buying process at which they are.
The two main types of leads are:
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
An MQL is simply a lead that your marketing team deems likely to turn into a sale eventually, and therefore qualifies for additional marketing, but isn’t yet ready to receive a sales call.
An MQL does not represent a done deal – the prospect is generally not ready to buy just yet. Nonetheless, marketing qualified leads are more likely to turn into customers compared to regular leads.
Some factors that help identify MQLs are as follows:
- Lead requests information via email but doesn’t ask to be contacted.
- Lead downloaded content from your website (ebooks, tip sheets, infographics, etc.)
- Lead visited your website numerous times to look at relevant product or service pages.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
An SQL is a prospective customer that has been researched and vetted – first by your marketing team, then by your sales team – and is deemed ready for a direct sales push.
Some of the factors which help identify sales qualified leads are as follows:
- Lead indicated they want to be contacted.
- Lead is identified as a decision maker or key stakeholder in the buying process at the company where they work.
- Lead indicated they’re willing to invest time in a meeting to discuss your products/services.
Identify which prospects are qualified for sales or marketing
Distinguishing between marketing and sales qualified leads might seem easy when we only consider the definitions.
In reality, many teams struggle to identify MQLs, SQLs, and those that don't fit into any of these categories.
Research shows that up to 90% of MQLs are not converted to SQL, either because they have been falsely identified as strong MQLs or because of flaws in marketing strategy at the MQL stage.
That's why marketing and sales teams need to work together to analyze where each prospect is in the buyer's journey.
At this point, your strategy is basically to figure out which leads are already SQL and can be passed on to the sales team, and which ones need more lead development.
Using lead scoring is one of the best ways to do this.
Lead scoring – a joint marketing and sales strategy
To determine whether you are dealing with MQLs or SQLs, you will need to employ an effective lead intelligence strategy, including lead scoring. Lead scoring is an essential process because it helps you determine which leads are ready for the sales team and which ones need more development from the marketing team.
Lead scoring can maximize the number of MQLs you can convert to SQL, and it's especially useful when sales and marketing work closely together. You assign a value to each lead based on engagement levels with CTA triggers on your website, automated marketing emails, and any other information you've gathered from your lead information.
- To avoid your sales team bothering leads before they’re ready to buy.
- To identify which leads require more lead nurturing from your marketing team.
- To allow your sales team to more easily identify leads who are ready to buy.
There are a number of ways you can score your leads, such as these five:
- Demographic information
- Company information
- Online behavior
- Email engagement and subscription status
- Social engagement
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| Example of a lead scoring system based on user behavior. Source |
Lead Generation Strategies
While there are many lead generation strategies to choose from, not all of them will be right for your business.
When considering which strategies to apply, always consider your target audience.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are they?
- Where do they engage and communicate?
- What are they doing there?
- What do they hope to achieve there?
like Facebook, for example. Your target audience may be there, but they may not be looking to buy your products. Or they may be looking for your product, but they're logged into Facebook with their private email address, not the company's.
Below, I've listed several common lead generation strategies that work for most businesses.
Don't worry if they seem complicated at first. In the last section of this article, we'll show you a simplified version of this process that can start generating leads for you by the end of the day.
1. Create gated content
I'm sure you've seen marketers offer different pieces of content such as white papers, cheat sheets, checklists, or chapters of their e-books in exchange for their website visitor information.
This is what we call gated content and is sometimes referred to by other terms like lead magnets, opt-in incentives, or content upgrades.
Secure content is one of the fundamental elements of lead generation. As you will see in a moment, many other lead generation strategies are inspired by it.
What is the strategy here?
Rather than doing cold outreach, create engaging content that your target audience will want to access and exchange contact information with.
Once they've engaged with your content, you can start nurturing them through your marketing communication until they're ready to buy from you.
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| Gated content example – Email Course on Video Marketing |
Editor’s note: Want to find out which opt-in incentives work best? Check out the Best Lead Magnets for Lead Generation study report.
2. Create landing pages and optimize them for conversions
Landing pages are pages specifically designed to help you achieve one goal: conversion. For lead generation, that usually means new email signups.
By placing gated content on your landing pages, you maximize your chances of converting your website visitors into new leads. If you were to place your lead magnet on your homepage instead, it would likely work less effectively. This is because landing pages usually have more calls to action and aim to achieve more than one goal.
Once you've created a high-converting landing page and placed your content upgrade there, you need to start driving traffic to it.
And that is what the next point is about.
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| Example of an ebook download landing page template you’ll find in the GetResponse Landing Page Creator |
Here, you can learn more on how to create a landing page and get inspiration from these landing page examples.
3. Drive traffic to your landing pages with paid ads
Although landing pages can be attached to your website and even appear in your main menu, most of the time you will want to use them as standalone pages.
But how will people find your landing page if they can't easily access it from your website? The answer is through paid ads.
With your new high-converting landing page, you'll want to reach new audiences. The fastest way to do this is through Facebook and Google Ads.
Here is an article that explains how you can create a Facebook ad in GetResponse. Below I've listed some targeting options and ideas you could try to generate leads with Facebook Ads and target people who:
- Like your Facebook page but aren’t on any of your email lists
- Visited your website in the last 30 days but haven’t signed up to your list
- Are similar to your current subscribers (Lookalike Audience)
- Are similar to your best subscribers or customers (Lookalike Audience)
- Are interested in the topics you cover in your gated content
I realize you might be slightly skeptical about using paid ads if you've never used them before.
That's why I recommend you start slow and only invest a small amount of money (even as little as $50 can go a long way). Test a few different approaches and play it safe until you see your strategy is working.
For inspiration, I highly recommend reading this case study from InfoShare Academy, where they explain how they managed to get 1,200 new leads by promoting their ebook using Facebook Lead Ads.
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| Example of a Facebook retargeting ad |
For more inspiration, check out these great social media ad examples.
4. Use lead ads to simplify the signup process
Speaking of lead ads, these are the next lead generation strategy you'll want to consider if you're offering gated content.
The difference between using normal Facebook ads and lead ads is that you don't really need a landing page to run them. Indeed, users can fill out the form and access your content directly from Facebook.
Another thing that's different about Lead Ads is that Facebook will pre-populate the form for the user so they don't need to enter their email address to receive your content.
This usually results in higher conversion rates and a lower cost per lead. At the same time, it may not be the best solution for everyone. Why? Because your audience may be B2B and most people are signed up to Facebook with their personal email address, not the business.
Keep this in mind when considering starting a lead advertising campaign.
And if you're thinking of trying them out, here's how you can set up and connect Facebook Lead Ads with GetResponse.
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| Example of a Facebook Lead Ad promoting an ebook. |
You’ll also want to know that “Lead Ads” aren’t just available on the Facebook platform. LinkedIn has Lead Gen Forms, Google has Lead Form Extensions, and Quora has Lead Gen Forms.
5. Host an online event
Video content tends to have more reach and engagement across all social media platforms.
Videos, especially live streaming events and video advertisements, can be used to promote your protected content.
They can also act as a form of gated content if you host a webinar that requires users to register for it.
Whether you're a content creator working alone or part of a larger team, you can generate a good number of leads using webinars.
Here you can learn more about how a webinar works and how you can ensure yours is a success.
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| Example of a webinar landing page that GetResponse hosted on building beautiful emails. |
6. Add calls to action
When advertising protected content, we need to ensure that visitors (who are not yet prospects) are properly incentivized to click the button that will lead to it.
For example, let's say we're in the content marketing business. We wrote a blog titled “How to Get Started with Content Marketing”. We promoted it on social media and attracted a number of business owners who are now reading the post.
We're careful not to leak the whole game in this article because we want those business owners to download our secure content: a free ebook titled "The Complete Guide to Content Marketing for SMBs."
So what we need to do is get them to do it – and, to do that, we need a strong call-to-action (CTA).
A CTA is a button, image, or sometimes a message that compels visitors to take some form of action. In terms of lead generation, this action will consist of navigating to a landing page where closed content can be viewed.
It is therefore important that our CTAs are attractive. More than that - unmissable. Even more than that – irresistible.
For the purpose of driving downloads of our ebook, perhaps best practice would be to display a nice bright image of the ebook cover that shows the title - "The Complete Guide to Content Marketing for Small Businesses" - and a button below that says something like "Free Download".
You can and should experiment with CTAs. You may find, for example, that "Download Now" produces better results than "Free Download", or that some images perform better than others. The only way to find out is to experiment - do it using the A/B testing capability available in GetResponse accounts.
Also, make sure your target audience sees your CTAs more than once.
When you've successfully convinced someone to subscribe to your mailing list, show them a CTA to download one of your ebooks or join your online course on the thank you page.
Once they attend your webinar and you share the recording, show them a CTA that takes them further in that relationship. You'd be amazed at how a simple CTA button can simplify the entire lead generation process as it directs your audience to the action you want them to take.
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| How Optimizely is using CTAs on their ebook download thank you page. |
Lead generation marketing – your first steps
Now that you've learned what lead generation is and how it works, you can start applying your newly learned skills so your business can grow and thrive.
To make your first steps easier, we would like to invite you to watch this video which shows you how you can create a complete lead generation campaign in one day.
As you are about to see, it uses a solution called Conversion Funnels, which, to put it simply, combines all of the strategies we listed above into the so-called marketing funnel.
Not only does it combine them, but it also simplifies the whole process and takes the guesswork out of it so you have more time to focus on what matters to your business.
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