Not long ago, in one of the projects, I had to explain to the client in detail what a lead is and why it is needed in the CRM system in particular, and for the work of his sales department in general. As practice shows, this case is far from isolated. Our businessmen understand what a client is, what a contact is, but the word lead confuses many people. And those who are familiar with this terminology very often mean by the word “lead” something different from the basic concepts.
The lack of reference literature written in simple and understandable language, as well as the creators, are to blame for the current situation. various systems for businesses that often introduce their own terminology or use generally accepted terms to designate structures whose functions may differ in one direction or another from basic concept"lead".
In this article, I decided to summarize my, in fact, very extensive experience in this matter, and understand in detail: what a lead is, why it is needed in sales and how it is used in CRM systems.
Lead: Definition
Lead (lead, target lead) is a potential client who has responded to marketing communications in one way or another. The term lead has become customary to designate a potential buyer, contact with him, obtained for subsequent managerial work with the client.
Lead (lead) is translated from English as a lead, evidence, binding. In Russian, the closest concept to the word lead is a potential client, i.e. a person who, on his own behalf or as a representative of a company, has some interest in products/services and may enter into a transaction with the seller in the future.
I believe that a lead is the contact information of a person who has shown real interest in the company’s products and services and in the future may become real client. Any sales manager knows that to work with potential clients, you must have at least contact information specific person, with whom you can further work (identify interest and needs, formulate an offer, discuss the terms of the transaction, etc.). That is why I emphasize that a lead is not just interest, but the contacts of a specific person.
For example, an interest could be a form request feedback or an incoming call, or a regular comment on social networks. “Interest” is any attention shown, including anonymous attention. It is also incorrect to call the data set “company and corporate phone number” a lead. But if this phone number is accompanied by the name of a person who has the right to discuss your interests on behalf of the company and shows interest in your products or services, this set of contacts is already a lead. It’s even better if the manager has a personal phone number and email of a person with whom he can negotiate.
Those. a lead is a set of contacts for a specific real person who, on his own behalf or on behalf of the company for which he works, expresses an interest in your goods or services and is authorized to negotiate and make certain decisions.
Lead in the CRM system
So, we figured out what a lead is in principle, but how and why should we work with it in the CRM system? We will now look into this very popular question.In almost any CRM system, contact information of potential and actual buyers is divided into three categories:
- Interest;
- Client.
In the case of distribution of leads, the manager’s first task may be “appoint a responsible person.” Also, the head of the sales department can additionally assign tasks related to the lead to the manager. For example, make a commercial proposal in writing and send it by email, or make other adjustments to the process of working with the client if necessary.
Lead processing
This is the work of a manager, which is carried out using CRM as an auxiliary tool (recording interest, setting tasks based on the results of each step, etc.). There may be a wide range of actions:- Phone calls;
- Correspondence by email;
- Sending advertising printing to the lead;
- Sending a commercial offer or price lists;
- Meetings in your office or on its territory, etc.
It is important that all methods of interaction with a lead are promptly recorded in the CRM system as tasks and reports on their completion, in this case the manager will always be able to view in real time what stage of work each lead is at, provide assistance to the manager, and correctly distribute the load by department specialists, etc.
Transformation of a lead into a contact or client
After receiving consent for cooperation, a separate element is created based on the lead - Client or Contact, with which the current work then continues. This is the next stage of working with the client, in which other people may be involved, there may be another responsible person, to correctly fill out the card, information that was not needed to work with the lead may be required (TIN, OKPO, company registration certificate number, etc.) .d.).At the same time, the Client (Contact) must be “connected” with the lead and, if necessary, you can always quickly go from the client card to the lead card, for example, to clarify some data from the history of negotiations at the initial stage.
Why separate Lead and Contact?
The question of why leads, clients, and contacts are divided in CRM is something I get asked very often. It would seem that the work is being carried out with one company or individual, no matter in what capacity they act, their data does not change. And in the CRM system there are several different directories, and when the status changes, information is copied or transferred from one directory to another.Indeed, some CRM systems have followed the path of a single directory of Contractors, in which only the attribute in the card changes - “lead, contact, client, etc.” In fact, this approach is not the best, since it greatly limits the capabilities of the CRM system.
- A lead and a client may have very different contact information. For example, a company could receive a lead at an exhibition. And it indicates what exhibition there was, with whom they communicated, and the contact telephone number of this person. And by the time a lead becomes a client, the manager is already in contact with completely different people, has a lot more information about the company, and therefore the cards end up differing significantly.
- There are tasks, such as sending out an auction offer, that will be of interest to leads, but are not needed by clients. And vice versa, there is no need for leads to see any notifications that are important for customers. And this division helps to sort them conveniently.
- History storage and analytics. Separation of leads and clients allows you to store the history of work with leads and clients separately, see exactly the moment when the lead became a client, and receive detailed reports on work with leads and clients, including for previous periods. This allows you to analyze the quality of work of the sales department and each manager, as well as the effectiveness of work with each specific lead and client.
- Monitoring the completeness of the lead and client cards. The quality of the manager’s work can also be assessed by the quality of filling out the card and the amount of information received during interaction with a potential client. And if it is normal for a lead to fill out 3-5 fields (full name, phone number, interest, company, etc.), then for a client the normal number of filled information fields can reach 10-15 pieces. And it will be wrong if they all appear in one general report, the manager will have to manually review each card that raises questions to ensure that it is filled out correctly.
- The lead and the client may have different responsible persons. For example, a telemarketing employee could work with a lead. And a sales department employee is already working with the client. And it is also important to save, including for analysis in the future, both states, so that the managers of these responsible persons can at any time analyze the quality of the employee’s work, including over a long period of time.
- Controlling the transformation of leads into contacts. After a lead requests and receives a commercial offer, enters into an agreement or makes the first purchase, he is transformed into a Client in the CRM system. At the same time, a link to the lead remains in the client card, i.e. these cards are “connected” to each other. And the manager at any time can see what percentage of leads have been transformed into clients, how quickly leads undergo or do not undergo this transformation.
What is lead generation?
When it comes to leads, another concept that comes up very often is lead generation. Essentially, if a lead is a goal, then lead generation is the process of obtaining leads. That’s why I also decided to say a few words about lead generation in this article.Lead generation is a marketing tactic aimed at finding potential clients with specific contact information.
Those. when ordering lead generation, the performer (company or individual) undertakes the responsibility to find a certain number of leads (potential clients) for the customer company, as well as either collect their contact information, or direct their flow to the site, where they themselves leave their contact information and etc.
How it works? For example, a manufacturing company participates in an exhibition where it collects data from potential customers, after which this data is distributed among the manufacturer’s dealers according to their regions.
One more example. The forum organizers are giving away prizes for programmers, for example. To participate in the lottery, you must leave a card with your contact details to the organizers and allow the forum organizers to process and use them. Next, all these cards are transferred to the headhunters with whom the lead generation agreement was concluded.
Lead generation is even more widespread on the Internet, where contact information of interested parties is actively collected using various questionnaires, prize draws, interesting subscriptions, etc. In most cases, companies that require contacts of potential clients do not deal with these issues themselves, but hire specialists for this.
Also, “lead generation” is often referred to as working with contact databases of potential clients. Personally, I think that this method is closer to spam, and it’s not worth calling it full-fledged lead generation. The essence of the method is that the company buys a database of enterprises that, by the nature of their activities, may turn out to be potential clients. Next, they hire people (often freelancers) to do “cold calling.”
What is the result? For example, out of a database of 1000 phones, 10 or 20 potential clients show real interest. Employees take their contact information and pass it on to the sales department for further processing. It would seem that the leads have been received. At the same time, the database was quite inexpensive; freelancers are also usually paid only for leads, and not for each call. Profitable and convenient.
In fact, everything is completely different. Such “telephone spam” is a low-paid job, which means that people who do not have high qualifications take it on. As a result, you have to spend your time and effort on strict control of their activities, which can also be safely considered a cost, since the manager at this time cannot engage in other activities that are more useful for the company. In addition, it is important to understand that you get 10 clients, but the remaining 990 are lost to you for at least several months, if not forever. “Telephone spam” irritates people, and the low level of training of people who agree to such work also aggravates the unpleasant impression. Therefore, I personally believe that such work is not full-fledged lead generation, and often harms the business much more than it helps.
Reprocessing leads
In addition to lead generation, i.e. attracting new leads, and ongoing work with existing leads, there is such a thing as lead reprocessing. In this case, leads who refused to cooperate for one reason or another are not removed from the system, but are marked “refusal”.What can be done after this?
- Send a “farewell letter.” This letter expresses regret that the client is leaving, offers a short questionnaire that will help clarify the reasons for the refusal, perhaps also unobtrusively suggests some kind of alternative solution, and so on. In some cases after farewell letter, if it is compiled correctly, of course, the potential client returns.
- Collect as much information as possible about the reason for the refusal and postpone the lead for the future. Perhaps the refusal is due to a change in plans or lack of funds at the moment, but, in principle, the lead is interested in your products and services. Leave it in the database along with all the collected information. Congratulate him on calendar holidays by email; after some time, the manager may return to re-communication. Perhaps by then the lead will already be ready to cooperate.
Summary
I believe that to build quality system sales using CRM, it is very important to separate Leads and Contacts (Customers). This is necessary both for the convenience of ongoing work with different categories, and for high-quality detailed analytics and quality control of the work of each sales department employee.Leads are the very first stage of any sales; without leads it is impossible to imagine any business. And how well the work with leads will be structured, how actively they will be attracted, and how well each of them will be processed in the sales department directly depends on the profit of any company.
Lead – an application (contact) from a potential buyer received through one of the sales channels. Depending on the purpose of generation, a contact can be considered: telephone, email, actual residential address.
Lead generation refers to the process of obtaining these contacts through the use of marketing tools.
There are 3 types of contacts:
Seeds
Applications generated as a result of word of mouth. Their advantages: high profitability and good level. They are the hottest. But seeds have a significant drawback - there are too few of them, since they appear as a result of not entirely controlled effects.
Nets
This type of contact includes requests that came through Internet marketing channels. The advantage is that there can be many of them due to the breadth of channels used. And their generation is easily calculated and predictable. The disadvantage of nets is that many of them are not the target audience, which means their conversion is lower.
Spears
The generation of this type occurs as a result of direct influence on them by the seller, which involves targeted efforts to personalize the commercial offer. Such contacts have good conversion rates and good profitability if they are a large client. Last advantage will turn out to be a disadvantage if the buyer turns out to be small.
2 types of qualifications
5 ways
Applications can be received through more than 2 dozen channels. The trick is to find your 2-3 effective ways getting leads. Pay attention to 5 of them.
Owninbound-channel
Simply put, your own blog/website filled with useful free content. And in case the buyer is imbued with confidence, receiving at his disposal useful information, it should be able to:
- register to receive useful newsletters
- downloading an electronic book (eBook) (free/paid)
- requests for a call, consultation, webinar
- purchasing a product
Electronic book or eBook
The e-book mentioned above is a factor and even a channel in isolation that enhances lead generation. Its use is especially effective in the B2B and B2P segments. The eBook has proven itself well in the areas of complex technological solutions. Professionals value innovation and knowledge. Give it to them.
Webinars
“Promotion through training” is the formula for this method of generating leads. The webinar itself is most often a free form of training. Use one of the available platforms. Make sure that the service you choose allows you to post forms for participants to fill out, download an eBook, or subscribe to a newsletter. Promote your webinar by calling your target audience, emailing and SMM.
Networking at third-party events and own event marketing
These are proven offline lead generation methods. Spears, by the way, mainly come through these channels.
Lead generation: another solution in the form of a chatbot
3 simple truths of internet marketing
1. Before promoting or selling anything on the Internet, make sure that the product is even requested through a search engine. If such a request does not exist, then lead generation is impossible. If they do ask, estimate the size of the target audience. For these purposes, you can use Wordstat.
2. If you are selling a complex and expensive product, then generating leads using online marketing tools is possible. But, most likely, a long chain of steps will be required to bring the buyer up to standard. For example, application – webinar – consultation – demonstration – payment.
3. Clearly track all the steps your competitors are taking. This is especially true when it comes to their content marketing efforts and free lead magnet offers. These are very serious ways to generate leads. And if you at least don’t play around, you’ll be left behind.
Read more about ways to increase traffic in our article about.
What is lead generation and what is its essence? What are the types and methods of lead generation? What services provide lead generation services?
Hello, dear readers! Alexander Berezhnov, the author of the HeatherBeaver magazine, is with you again. Today I’ll tell you about a new direction in Internet marketing – lead generation.
Every entrepreneur wants to bring as many clients into their business as possible. Satisfied customers are the key to prosperity. And you are ready to give 100% for them. But where to find, how to attract these people?
Think about it - while your competitors are spending budgets on expensive television and radio advertising, you can overtake them and build successful business. And all this with the help of a competent system for attracting potential clients.
1. What is lead generation - a complete description of the concept
The concept of lead generation (from English. Leads generation) came to us from Western marketers as a tool for managing the flow of potential clients.
Note that a lead is not a client yet, but can become one if you manage to attract him.
An ordinary person will turn into a lead if:
- will see information about you and your services online or offline;
- will need these services, i.e. will reach your target audience;
- visit the site or make a call;
- leave a request or contacts for feedback, subscribe to the email newsletter.
Natural questions: what needs to be done to attract as many applications as possible? Where to look for them? How to turn millions of users into your leads? How to make yourself known to capture their attention? These problems are solved by lead generation - the process of attracting or generating leads.
Before talking about this new business process, I would like to make one important note:
Lead generation will not work on its own - it needs an appropriate “environment”: high-quality content on the site, viral mailings, interesting offers, corporate identity and other auxiliary marketing tools.
2. Types and methods of attracting clients (leads)
If you think that lead generation is only suitable for large companies, holding companies and other giants, you are mistaken. A coffee shop around the corner, a private dentistry, an eco-products store or a cleaning agency will benefit from lead generation just as much.
So where will we attract our leads from? Most often - from the Internet, because this is the method that allows you to control the flow and conversion (the ratio of potential clients to real ones). This means the cost of attracting each client.
The most popular traffic sources (channels for attracting customers from the Internet):
- contextual advertising. The user searches for goods and services on the Internet. If his needs coincide with your offer (he is looking for children's orthopedic boots, and you sell just such shoes), the search engine will helpfully provide exactly this advertisement. Whether he clicks on it or not depends on the attractiveness of your offer. Typically, ad impressions are free, and payment is made only for the actual click on the ad. The most popular sources of contextual advertising: Yandex.Direct, GoogleAdwords. We have already written in more detail about how it works.
- Targeted advertising. Your audience is women from 25 to 35 who live in Samara and studied at Samara State University? Thanks to targeted (from the word target - goal) advertising, your ad will be shown only to them, and to no one else. You reach your target audience directly. Targeted advertising is available on social networks, where users disclose their data: age, gender, social status: VKontakte, Facebook, Odnoklassniki.
- Blogs and Other Internet Marketing Tools. A good article from a respected blogger, interesting e-mail newsletter, a tempting offer in the community feed.
- Aggregator platforms: Yandex.Market, Ozone, Carprice, Avito, Mednow, other specialized or general sites that collect advertisements and offers.
- Lead Exchange. A place where contacts are sold and bought (yes, it’s that simple). Lead sellers are popular bloggers with a large number visitors, aggregators with huge databases of people’s contacts. The main requirement is that all these contacts must be interested in the product or service. If you are engaged in the practice of law, then your leads must have made a request for legal services somewhere and left their data (participate in a survey or promotion, subscribe to a newsletter). Such data are objects of purchase and sale on lead exchanges.
All these sources, with correct use, will bring potential clients to pre-prepared “networks”.
These include:
- Landing pages or in other words, one-page presentation sites where people end up by clicking on your ad. If you are trading glasses, and in summer period If you launch a “sunglasses as a gift” promotion, you can create, in addition to the main site, a separate one-page page where the types, types, colors of sunglasses will be described in detail, and your promotion will be presented. The purpose of such a page is to encourage the visitor to leave a request or at least his details - phone number, email, log in through your profile on social networks. This is how a previously unknown person becomes a lead. A landing page is also necessary to calculate the cost of an advertising campaign.
- Main site settings. A pop-up window with an online consultant, a pop-up offer to order feedback, a request for authorization through a social network - all these are lead generation “tricks” for gathering contacts of potential clients.
The methods described are suitable for finding and attracting leads on the Internet. There are offline methods: television and radio advertising, banners, paper letters and other types of conventional advertising. Their main drawback is the inability to calculate the cost of attracting one client, because traditional advertising is most often addressed to an unlimited circle of people and deprives us of the opportunity to contact everyone personally.
3. Practical examples of lead generation
To show you how lead generation works in action, let's look at a few practical examples.
Example 1. Advertising campaign “Sunglasses to the masses!”
The Glasses for Everyone company is developing successfully. She has 5 points of sale in shopping centers Moscow, online store. TO summer season It was decided to hold the “Sunglasses to the Masses!” campaign to increase sales, increase brand awareness, and attract new customers to other products.
The first thing a company marketer starts with is making a list of keywords. The keyword impression statistics service "wordstat.yandex" for the query "Sunglasses" produces the following combinations:
- sunglasses – 60 thousand requests;
- sunglasses – 17 thousand requests;
- buy sunglasses – 2 thousand requests;
- men's sunglasses – 1 thousand requests;
- women's sunglasses – 1 thousand requests.
Since the online store delivers goods throughout the country, it is not necessary to select separate regions. Now users who entered these phrases in Yandex will be shown a pre-approved ad: “ Buy sunglasses with a 50% discount until July 1, 2016».
In the first month, this ad was shown 400 times. It led to the site 100 times (every fourth user). These 100 people can soon become our leads, provided that they like the price, delivery conditions, website design, etc.
Out of 100 people, 3 made a purchase, 1 called the office, 2 left their e-mail in the feedback form, 3 contacted the online consultant. In total, we received 9 leads (3 of which are already clients).
Example 2. Advertising campaign “Lens”
The same eyeglass company decided to increase sales.
The company management found the result insufficient. Or maybe it knows the motto of lead generation: “There are never too many clients”? It was decided to try other traffic channels. For this purpose, the advertising campaign “Lens” was chosen, which will be implemented on the Vkontakte social network.
An announcement was created here: “On your birthday, every second lens is a gift.” The target audience has been selected: women over 18 years old, living in Russia, whose birthday is in the coming week. The payment for clicking on an advertisement has been determined.
During the week of placement, 300 people clicked on the ad, 6 bought lenses at the promotion, 5 took part in the survey, 5 called the office. All 16 people are leads, of which 6 are established clients.
Example 3. Advertising campaign “Glasses with diamonds”
The management liked the new ways to attract leads and wanted to try another option. This time it was decided to take a risk and buy leads on the exchange. For these purposes, the third advertising campaign “Glasses with Diamonds” was created.
Having registered on one of the exchanges, the marketer submitted a purchase request, indicating the following parameters:
- gender: any;
- age – from 30 years;
- region of residence: Moscow and St. Petersburg;
- required contacts: phone and e-mail;
- having a job (desirable);
- marital status: have a partner;
- interested in purchasing high-quality and beautiful glasses.
The exchange set a price per lead of 600 rubles. 50 contacts were provided. The marketer sent them offers to buy glasses with diamond-encrusted temples, advertising them as a possible birthday gift for their significant other or themselves. Potential clients were then called. As a result, 11 people placed an order.
Below, in practical examples, I will give calculations that reflect the results of each of the 3 advertising campaigns.
4. Advantages and disadvantages of lead generation
Like any human creation, lead generation is imperfect. It should be considered as one of the ways to attract customers to your business. One of the ways - and not the only one.
Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of lead generation in the form of a table
If you are a professional in Internet marketing, know how to work with numbers and find suitable channels for attracting customers, then this tool will help you, as a marketer or business owner, increase profits and recoup advertising costs.
5. Calculation of the cost of leads using specific examples (CPL model)
The main advantage of online lead generation is the ability to calculate the price of each potential client. How to do it?
There are several ways to calculate payments in online marketing:
- CPA model (Cost per Acquisition). Payment for purchase. The lead must make a purchase or leave an application on your website. In some cases - take part in voting, subscribe to the newsletter, or otherwise leave your contacts.
- CPC model (Cost per Click). Pay per click. Here everything is much simpler - the user clicks on your ad and the amount is debited from the account. What this user will do next - leave a request or immediately close the page - the seller does not care.
- CPL model (Cost per Lead). Payment for the client’s contact, or more precisely, for the contact information and social portrait of the future client. CPL is the main indicator of lead generation quality that meets market requirements. There is contact - there is payment. The lead “lost” without leaving any information about himself - the money remains with you.
If you attract clients to your business using lead generation, it will be useful for you to learn how to calculate the cost of one lead using the CPL model.
To track the number of transactions concluded with clients attracted using this marketing tool, it is recommended, in addition to the landing page (one-page website), allocate a separate phone number that will be shown only within a specific advertising campaign. Then you can accurately count the number of applications from the landing page and the number of calls made by potential clients.
Let me remind you that not all applications become clients. The CPL model calculates the cost of leads – potential customers. The cost of converting a lead into a client is a separate expense item and a different topic.
So, let’s calculate the cost of one lead using the “Sunglasses” advertising campaign as an example.
Known data:
- number of clicks on the ad (reflected in the metric) – 100 clicks;
- cost per click (CPC, set in the advertising campaign settings) – 150 rubles;
- number of leads (the number of applications on the site plus the number of calls is counted. For this, a separate landing page and a separate phone number are required) – 9 leads.
Action 1. Let’s calculate the budget for the “Sunglasses” campaign: just multiply the number of clicks by the cost of one click. We get: Budget=100*150=15000 (rubles).
Action 2. We calculate the cost per lead (CPL). Everything is simple here - the budget must be divided by the number of leads: 15000/9=1666 (rubles per application). So, the cost of a lead is 1666 rubles.
Is this a lot or a little? A natural question. Depends on the markup on the average check. If it does not exceed the cost of a lead (not even a client, but just a lead), urgently change either the traffic source, or the ad text, or the cost of transition.
It helps well to navigate the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. Such an indicator as conversion rate (CTR)– the ratio of the number of website (page) visitors to the number of contacts – people who left a request. Let’s calculate it for the “Sunglasses” campaign:
Action 3. Transitions – 100, leads – 9. Conversion rate (CR) = number of leads / number of visitors = 9/100 = 9 (%). So the conversion is 9%.
Everything is known by comparison, and so is the effectiveness of the source.
Compose comparison table all channels of customer acquisition.
For example, let’s take our “Sunglasses”, which was promoted using context, and also add the “Lens” and “Glasses with Diamonds” campaigns.
| № | Indicators | Sunglasses | Lenses | Glasses with diamonds |
| 1 | CPL (cost per click) | 150 rub. | 45 rub. | 600 rub. |
| 2 | Number of transitions | 100 | 300 | 50 |
| 3 | Budget | 15,000 rub. | 13,500 rub. | 30,000 rub. |
| 4 | Number of leads | 9 | 16 | 11 |
| 5 | CPL (cost per lead) | RUB 1,666 | 844 rub. | RUB 2,727 |
| 6 | CR (conversion) | 9 % | 5,3 % | 22 % |
What do we see? "Glasses with diamonds", despite high cost click (as much as 600 rubles) and the high cost of one lead (2,727 rubles) showed very, very good conversion.
The lenses “lose” in terms of conversion, but the cost of attracting one application is low. Our “Sunglasses” turned out to be the most ineffective advertising campaign - the budget is higher, as is the cost of a lead.
To have full information, it is better to observe the situation in dynamics. Create a similar table for advertising campaigns over several months to see progress. Discard ineffective decisions immediately or adjust depending on the season, actions of competitors, etc...
6. Where to buy leads - lead generation agencies
You received general idea about lead generation, and, reading the article, most likely tried this tool on for their own business.
- Is contextual or targeted advertising right for you?
- Do you want to do lead generation yourself?
- Are you ready to explore a new area?
If yes, then you can skip this section. Your future plans are to study the basics SMM And SEO.
But if your busy schedule does not allow you to plunge headlong into this exciting process, it is better to hire a company that will provide A complex approach– receipt of leads from all traffic sources, starting from the creation of a landing page and content, ending with Yandex.Direct and social networks.
Such companies are called lead generation agencies . How are they different from exchanges? The main task of the exchange is to bring together the buyer and seller of applications in one place, help them find each other, and receive their commission for this. On the exchange you simply buy leads. The agency offers lead generation services from all sources, including the same exchanges.
If you are thinking about buying turnkey applications, such agencies are suitable to do the “grunt” work for you: select keywords, compose and place ads, create a landing page, track work performance. But there are things that you still have to do yourself if you want the costs to pay off:
- Check your keyword list carefully. Take the time to enter each suggested keyword into Wordstat to compare the number of queries.
- Make a portrait target client , at whom this or that advertising campaign is aimed.
- Check your ads for accuracy before launching. If a third-party manager, due to a defect or ignorance, gives false information, you risk not gaining, but losing customers and reputation;
- Control the cost of one lead and the effectiveness of the funds spent. Feel free to ask, ask again, ask again. Your money is your rules.
And most importantly, ruthlessly part with ineffective advertising campaigns, managers and agencies! Remember: all application generation services must be aimed at profit. You don’t need to receive targeted applications just for show, and “to be like all serious companies.”
7. How to start a business providing lead generation services
Have you tried attracting clients to your business and liked it? Moreover, you are very good at it, did you get carried away and decided to develop a new direction? Wondering where to start? You have several options:
- Selling leads: create a website with high-quality content, promote it in search, creating a flow of visitors and readers. Sell these contacts to interested buyers through the exchange, agencies, freelancers. Main problem: High-quality texts require time, professionalism and patience. You will have to work for a long time, but the flow of applications will be high-quality.
- Open a lead generation agency, providing a turnkey service for attracting potential clients. You will have to master all traffic sources and learn how to work with them. But the main task is to find clients. You can do this, as you already understand, using your favorite application generation. Main problem: find clients rich enough to afford integrated marketing, but not so poor that they cannot at least afford lead generation.
- Teach everyone this art. You can record several videos with free lessons and post them on Youtube. Of course, develop a landing page and attract applications to it. Main problem: to convince people that they can make money in a new profession and not be branded a “swindler.” By investing in training, people want to receive ready-made solution, and you will “merely” give them the means to find this solution.
- Create an exchange for selling contacts of potential clients. You will have to first purchase the data, selectively check its authenticity, and then put it up for sale. The scheme is the same: website (landing page), attracting potential clients, buying and selling. Main problem: torn between salespeople who think their leads are perfect and buyers who have the opposite opinion.
Business must be profitable. So take your time, anyone successful project requires preparation:
- Drawing up a business plan. Who do you plan to sell your services to? At what price? Who are your clients? How are you going to attract them? How much investment do you need to make and how quickly will it pay off? Quantity, quality of personnel. Optimistic and pessimistic forecasts. Previously, I already wrote about.
- Enterprise registration. Individual entrepreneur or LLC? Tax system. Overhead costs, non-operating and selling costs, structure of services. or we wrote in previous articles.
- Marketing market research. Who are your competitors? What are the strengths and weak sides? Market capacity, segmentation, niche you plan to occupy.
An important part of preparation is training. Identify knowledge gaps and address them. If accounting can be transferred to, then the main activity at first is your responsibility. Where can you learn how to generate clients? This will be discussed further.
8. Lead generation academy and other available training methods
How can you get comprehensive, complete knowledge on all the nuances of lead generation? – Learn from proven masters who will explain, chew, show and tell. Most often, learning takes place online and consists of lessons and homework.
Among the major educational projects, the Lead Generation Academy stands out. “Tasty” offers, promises of millions, excellent feedback from participants - I want to go study right now.
But there is no magic. Will you be trained at the Academy, or any other educational institution, remember: saving drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves. To ensure that your training produces results and does not bring disappointment, follow these simple recommendations:
- don’t expect ready-made recipes from teachers that will lead you to a bright future without investment on your part. You will have to work a lot on your own, experiment, make mistakes, and develop your own methods. And if you do decide to start your own business, you will also need material investments.
- decide what you want to do, find your business, idea. Will these be lead generation services, or do you intend to attract clients to your existing business or open a new one? Without an idea, lessons will only be half useful.
Another effective (and free) way to learn is self-education. The Internet is filled with articles, blogs, and video tutorials that will give you a complete understanding of this Internet marketing technique, and your persistence, patience and practice (more practice!) will gradually make you a professional lead manager.
Then you will begin to understand who is who, where you can turn for advice and give money for experience.
9. Conclusion
Lead generation is a developing direction in marketing, the task of which is to attract clients to business . This is relevant both for the company’s marketers and for its direct owners (managers).
Leads– these are potential clients who are interested in the service and have provided their contacts for feedback.
This method of receiving contacts potential buyers will be useful only if used correctly. You need to carefully study the tools, and most importantly, calculate the effectiveness in monetary terms.
Sources of mass lead generation: social media, blogs, lead exchange, contextual advertising. All of these channels should lead potential customers either to your main website or to a landing page created specifically for the advertising campaign.
Those who have mastered the intricacies of this Internet marketing tool, with the right approach, can open several types of businesses listed above in the article.
The main recipe for mastering new specialty: hard work, practice and an idea that you will bring to life by generating applications. Ready-made recipes Not a single training center and even the most professional lead manager will give you. All in your hands!
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We have all been in such a situation when the wife just took delicious spaghetti with delicious cutlets off the stove, laid it all out beautifully on a plate and served it on the table.
And just when you felt an inexorable desire to deal with this by picking up a fork, the phone rings, and on the other end of the line there is an annoying sales manager who is trying to find new clients with cold calls.
That is why today I want to tell you about lead generation techniques that do not bore the consumer and do not distract him from have a delicious lunch or dinner prepared by your beloved wife.
What is a lead?
Let's start from the beginning. A lead is a person who has his own preferences and interests that may intersect with the services or products that your company offers.
This means that instead of making cold calls trying to stumble upon a potential client who suits you, it is better to call those who have already heard at least a little about you and are interested in additional information. For example, perhaps you took an online survey to find out how best to take care of your own car. If you received an email from the car company that conducted this survey, asking you how this company can help you with servicing your car, then this method of engagement will be less intrusive and more appropriate than you suddenly received a call with similar questions and offers. when you don’t even have a car... right?
And from a business perspective, the information collected by a car company through a survey will allow you to personalize you and learn in advance what can be offered to you as a potential client.
When someone who has nothing to do with marketing asks what I do, I often answer that I create content to generate leads, and then they either stop talking to me or look at me with confusion.
So instead, I recommend you respond with “Working on finding unique ways attracting people to my business. I want to offer them products that they are truly interested in, so I need to do some research first and also get them interested in my brand!”
This is usually more understandable to people and represents . This is a way to warm up potential clients by introducing them to you. By showing a natural interest in your business, they begin to interact (with your business), making it easier for you to offer them something for them to buy.
As part of a larger marketing plan, attracting leads falls into the second stage. This stage comes after you have attracted an audience and are ready to convert these visitors to your sales managers. As you can see in the chart below, lead generation is a fundamental step in converting an ordinary visitor into your customer.
How can you qualify leads?
As you already know, a lead is a person who has shown interest in your company's products or services. Now let's discuss ways to show this very interest.
As it turns out, lead generation is all about collecting information. This information may be collected through a job application completed by the applicant, through a coupon given to the buyer in exchange for their contact information, or through an online form that allows users to download educational materials. .
These are just a few methods by which you can characterize a particular visitor as a lead. In addition, such methods allow you to determine the degree of interest of a person in your company. Let's look at each scenario separately:
3. Content: downloading a coupon indicates that a person has a direct interest in your product or services, content (educational books or webinars), but the content itself cannot give you such information. Therefore, to truly determine a visitor's level of interest, we need to gather more information.
These three general examples show us how lead generation can differ from company to company, and from one visitor to another. You need to gather enough information to determine whether the person actually has an interest, or is simply falling for whatever they are asked to fill out.
Let's take . They use educational webinars for lead generation, and collect 7 points of information from potential buyers and leads:
As you can see, the landing page is trying to find out:
- Name: basic information for interaction
- Last name: basic information for interaction
- Email: This information will allow you to offer services via email.
- Company name: This information will allow you to determine how and whether your product will benefit the buyer (mostly used in B2B work)
- Position: information in order to understand a person’s position in business in order to build appropriate interaction with him. Each stakeholder will have a certain stake in the business and therefore the prospects for your proposal will also differ from person to person
- Telephone number: Typically, a telephone number is only used when determining a strong interest, which ensures that your call will not be sudden and intrusive to the person.
- Project Time Frame: Ends your survey with a very specific question that allows you to determine how to communicate with the lead.
If you want to learn about other, more complex methods for collecting information, as well as what to ask in questionnaires, you can read about it here. But let's continue... Let's get back to the basics...
Lead generation mechanism
Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the overall marketing process, let's look at the main components of the lead generation process:
1. Landing page: landing or is a web page that a visitor lands on with specific intentions. Although landing pages can be used for many purposes, one of the most suitable is lead generation.
2. Questionnaires and forms: Landing pages usually contain forms with several fields, by filling which the visitor provides you with his contact information and at the same time informs of his interest in your company.
4. Call to action: A call to action (or call-to-action) is an image, button or message that encourages a website visitor to take some action. When it comes to lead generation, this component encourages visitors to (yes, you guessed it!) fill out a form on the landing page. Now do you understand how this is all connected?
Once you put all these elements together, you can use different promotional channels to link and drive traffic to your landing pages, which in turn will generate leads. Here is a small example of lead generation:
Now you should have an idea of how the lead generation mechanism works. But remember that this is just a base and we still have a lot to learn. So stay tuned for news!
Without a flow of potential customers, no business can survive. That's why every marketer struggles to develop advertising campaigns and create new ways to attract leads. However, it is known that capturing people's attention and converting them into buyers is not so easy. Internet users have developed an “immunity” to standard advertising messages. And little tricks of online psychology come into play.
In this article you will learn 12 effective techniques, which will simplify lead generation and increase the number of customers actually interested in your offer.
Landing Pages
It seems that it has been studied inside and out. In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to optimize them. It is quite possible that you have heard about many of them, but did not dare to implement them. See what results they bring.
Make a video about the product
Some studies say that 65% of people are visual learners. It would be a sin not to use this method of presenting information on your landing page. A high-quality video perfectly attracts attention, and, most importantly, increases conversion by 33-35%.
Don't forget about the viral effect. People willingly share what is valuable and interesting. As a result, the link to the landing page can be distributed completely free of charge.
If you think that a cool video must be ordered from a cool studio, then it’s in vain. You can take it on your iPhone, or use online services (for example, Animoto and Powtoon). This requires a minimum of technical skills.
The criteria for a selling video are laconic (no more than 2 minutes) and interesting (under no circumstances should you film a “talking head” with an official report). Most best option- show a product or service in action.
Avoid mentioning spam in your lead form
Danish marketer Mikael Ogard tested several forms with the phrase “we will never send you spam” in the signature. The result is a reduction in conversion by 18-21%.
If you want to alleviate users' concerns, it is better to use more neutral language. For example, “100% confidentiality guaranteed.”
Set a selection limit
The fewer additional links next to the lead form, the higher the conversion. Any distractions for a landing page are enemy No. 1. For example, the MySiteAuditor agency increased lead form conversion by 25% by eliminating the top menu.
As it was:
and how it became:
Content Marketing
Becomes the most effective approach in lead generation. If your corporate website doesn’t have a blog, then it’s time to start one.
Publish new materials regularly
At the very beginning, it is recommended to create a detailed content plan for at least 3 months. What and when you will publish. The optimal frequency of publishing materials in each niche is different. Some services release something new every day, and at the start of a content campaign this is justified. There have been cases of doubling organic traffic literally in 5-6 months after daily publications.
At least write once a week. And in any case, focus on the response of the target audience.
Create an email newsletter
Having blog readers receive news via email is a powerful reinforcer for their engagement. Those who liked your materials will definitely subscribe to your newsletter. The optimal place to place the subscription widget is the right sidebar + a call at the end of the article.
Post long-lasting content
Surely in many blogs you have come across articles from 2-3 years ago that are interesting and relevant to this day. Such content does not disappear without a trace over time, but continues to tirelessly generate traffic. Plus, popular materials from past years can be slightly updated and published again. For example, taking into account recent changes in the industry.
Optimize your About page
Typically, describing a company will make you yawn or feel nauseous. So model successful examples. Moreover, not necessarily from your niche, since competitors, as a rule, have the same thing. Look at the example of the American video studio LessFilms:
Unusual images, witty texts and light humor not only make the “About” page memorable, but form positive associations with your brand. Again, a viral effect cannot be ruled out.
Pop-up windows
No matter what anyone says negatively about pop-up windows, they effectively convert leads. For example, thanks to them, the Aweber service blog increased the number of subscribers 13 times in 7 months. The main condition for the effectiveness of the reception is unobtrusiveness and a confidential style of address, without “market chants”.
A number of tests have shown that optimal time display of a pop-up window - 2.5 minutes after opening the page. You shouldn’t immediately attack the visitor, let him read it. By the way, the same recommendation applies to online consultants.
Twitter Lead Segmentation
The Twitter account is excellent at generating leads in intellectual niches (IT, internet marketing, business consulting, etc.) The Followerwonk platform helps filter readers by degree of engagement, and, therefore, proximity to a paid offer.
Perhaps this is the least studied network on Russian market. And in vain, since LinkedIn is best suited for the B2B sphere. Look at the results of a survey of marketers in the US, which network they consider suitable for generating leads.
Offline methods
Potential clients still live not only online. Strange, isn't it? Seriously, the last 2 methods successfully attract and will attract leads at all times.
Performances at live events
There are professional associations in almost every niche. If not in your city, then in the neighboring one. And at least several times a year they organize live conferences and seminars.
Even a short speech of 10-15 minutes can attract... exactly how much depends only on your expertise. The main thing is that the content of the speech is filled with information that is truly useful for the target audience.
Strategic partnership
A number of businesses grow only through partnerships. Especially in the online marketing niche, you can create an entire lead exchange system. Naturally, not with competitors, but with related businesses. For example, a web studio and contextual advertising agency.
As a conclusion, we once again urge you to test each technique, and happy sales to you!