What Is a Lead and The Fast and Easy Way to Acquire Them

Your eCommerce business requires individuals who are interested in your products or services in order to survive and prosper. How are you supposed to ensure this? The solution has to do with leads. 

The concept of a lead can be rather complicated. It’s no surprise that so many business owners still wonder what exactly is a lead.

If you are wondering the same, you’re in the right place. Today, you’ll find out what is a lead and how you can acquire them quickly. 

Let’s get down to business!

What Is a Lead in Business?

A lead is someone who has expressed interest in your business’s products or services. 

They’ve given you at least some basic information, indicating that they might be interested in buying from you. They might have given you their contact information, interacted with your website, or subscribed to your blog, for example.

Since people have varied interests and needs, not everyone will be a good lead for every company. Likewise, not all leads are created equal.

This is where lead generating comes in.

Inbound vs. Outbound Lead Generation

Inbound lead generation and outbound lead generation are two types of lead generating.

A customer-centric inbound lead generation strategy is employed to engage people who seek you out. Providing useful content is essential. The goal is to capture them and nurture them down the funnel, with a purchase as the ultimate result.

Instead of waiting for the customer to come to you, you can go to them with outbound lead generation – a proactive strategy. Sending out targeted emails, for example, is a good place to start. You could also make cold calls to potential consumers.

There are four steps to getting started with lead creation, regardless of your strategy:

  1. Create a buyer persona.
  2. Define your objectives.
  3. Select the appropriate marketing channels.
  4. Make a database that is segmented.

Classifying and Acquiring Leads

Lead generation is crucial to your company’s operations. It aids in long-term success and growth. 

In most cases, the initial stage in the sales process is to generate leads. It entails attracting, nurturing, and persuading prospective clients to make a purchase from you.

Various strategies, such as content marketing and email marketing, can be utilized to generate leads in the first place. Blog entries, case studies, infographics, ebooks, videos, and social media are all examples of content marketing. Newsletters, lead nurturing emails, and brand story emails are all examples of email marketing.

Talking directly to potential leads, contests and giveaways, sponsored ads, and referrals are some of the other techniques.

Four Major Ways Leads Come Into Your Funnel

  1. Names on a list

It’s critical to have a list of quality leads who are interested in purchasing your product or service. You can either make your own list or buy one from a list broker.

This category includes people who recently bought something from you but didn’t buy anything else in the period allotted or those who, before completing their order, abandoned their shopping cart.

  1. Referrals

Referrals are a good way to get leads. These are folks you’re familiar with, such as your existing customers. If they rave about what you have to offer and the service you provide, their friends and family members might want to give it a try as well.

  1. Responses to advertising

The concept behind this form of lead generation is that someone sees your ad or marketing message and calls to learn more about you.

These leads can be quite valuable because they are folks who have wants that are now being met by what you have to offer.

That’s the beauty of this strategy: you’re not wasting any advertising time because you’re reaching out to people who are already interested in what you have for sale or other services that your company can provide.

It also means a greater conversion rate, which is important when trying to build a successful and profitable company endeavor over time. If you’re running a business, you want to make the most of what you have.

  1. Inbound marketing and SEO

Because it is built on producing an ongoing flow of visitors from many various sources that will eventually lead to a conversion, inbound marketing is also known as “marketing in motion.”

While it’s true that inbound marketing includes blogging and developing online content to attract potential customers and subsequently convert them into leads, the concept of inbound marketing is much more than that.

The premise behind inbound marketing is that “lead capture,” or the process of generating leads, should be incorporated into everything you do online.

This means that when you create content or design your website, you should consider what creates leads for your firm.

When you combine it with SEO, you’ll have a strong basis for success.

These four approaches can be divided into two major types:

  1. Marketing

Based on your sales/marketing strategy, you might come across a situation where you need to reach out to people who are “unaware” of your brand.

  1. Cold outreach 

If your sales strategy focuses less on advertising and more on locating qualified prospects to cold pitch (as many B2Bs do), your leads may be leads before they’ve heard of your company.

Here are some lead examples to paint a picture of both types: 

Marketing – You advertise on any platform (e.g., Facebook, Adwords) in the hopes of eventually obtaining people’s or businesses’ contact information.

Cold outreach – You scour the Internet for high-quality leads and the names of possible decision-makers to email and cold call in order to start a discussion and determine whether or not the lead is a good fit for your business or service.

What are common leads? The three types

There are three categories of leads that you should be aware of.

  1. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A lead can be marketed and become a MQL when they are ready to receive materials and content that will help them get closer to becoming sales-ready.

Your procedure here will differ depending on how you obtained the lead:

  • Via marketing

To elicit a response and measure willingness to buy, funnels are built up to deliver content and other stuff to leads. When a lead makes a move, clicks on a CTA, or otherwise interacts with your content, their score climbs.

  • Via cold outreach

You’ll need to swiftly determine whether your lead is a suspect or a prospect.

Suspects are leads that appear promising but aren’t really interested in striking a deal. They should be recognized and disposed of as soon as possible. Prospects are in desperate need of your items and are on the verge of purchasing them.

2. Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)

What is a lead in sales?

When a lead obtains a score that suggests they are ready for a sales contact, many companies send them to the sales department to participate in the process.

To add a phase to the process that would assist your marketing team score leads more accurately while also guaranteeing that only the best prospects moved on to the next label, schedule an exploratory conversation with the lead and a sales rep after the lead meets the conditions for moving to sales.

3. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

A lead will be qualified for sales at the end of the process.

In some firms, this implies they’ve hit the lead score and have gone straight to sales for processing, or the sales team has given them a preliminary look and is now aggressively pursuing the close of the deal.

This stage is the same for both traditional marketing efforts and cold outreach.

You’re all set to provide a demo, make a pitch, and have the last dialogue to close the transaction.

They should now be at a position where they must make a decision. They become sales qualified when they are really contemplating purchasing.

What is a Closed Won/Lost Lead

As you may have guessed, at the end of a sales call, you have three options – yes, no, and possibly.

YES, or a “closed won lead” means you got the transaction, and it’s closed. The money is in the bank, and it will appear on your next paycheck if you’re paid on a commission basis.

NO, or a “closed lost lead” means you didn’t close the sale, and the lead stated that they wouldn’t buy your solution.

Conclusion

Every business has to face the difficulty of attracting new customers, and the trouble doesn’t stop there. After that, you must qualify those who have expressed an interest in your company.

The lead generation funnel makes it easier to keep track of the process. Inbound and outbound methods can both be used to create leads. You can use a variety of marketing tactics, such as targeted emails, newsletters, blog posts, and social media. 

Hopefully, my explanations will assist you and your team in being better prepared and ready to call and email potential leads.