What is lead marketing? How it helps you boost sales leads?

When you build a B2B business, you must have some strong foundation that has ready, such as strong product development energy that helps you keep staying in the position that is unable to be replaced in the market, you already know the production and service flow well that you can execute service by yourself, or you already have your own client channel that brings deals and revenue to support your business.

On the first step, you can be the one who starts the business and execute a lot of things, but if you want to pilot CEO things that grow your company, the things that you’re doing should be more flexible. Think about it, if you’re the only one who can find leads and deal with the clients when you need to focus on product development, customer service, or a big business collaboration with other companies, what will happen to your financial statements when you review them on the next month?

You should make the “lead-deal-service/production” flow runs well, the most important part is the beginning of the flow: leads. You must make sure the source of potential clients is stable so that you can put yourself in a flexible role but no need to worry about your revenue.

You must think that if so, why shouldn’t I hire a superb sales, and he/she can sell a lot, also? Actually, it’s a dangerous idea that you rely on a specific person for your business growth, if the person has some accident or leaves your company, your revenue will be cut until you find the next ideal sales representation.

Having a stable client source for your own company is the first thing that you must establish well when you want to push your company to the next level. You need to think about marketing matters, “lead generation marketing” will help you a lot.

What is lead generation marketing in short?

Lead marketing (also called lead generation marketing or lead-gen marketing) is the “series process design” that using several marketing methods and connects them by touchpoints that driving the potential customers being found and converting them into buyers by you. 

Before learning lead marketing, you need to know the definition of “lead”.

 

What is a lead in digital marketing?

In the prospect of sales, a “lead” means contact information with a potential client. The contact information including name, phone, email, company, job title, and website…etc. “Lead” means the final quantized metrics that the marketing plan should achieve and optimize continuously for.

 

Why do I need lead marketing?

There are two different types of business that are highly recommended to use lead marketing to boost business growth: B2B business & service-focused business. The most important factor to growing revenue well is to have potential client lists (so-called “leads”). 

B2B business: construct, trading, and foundry…etc.

Service-focused business: high tech development, finance, and education…etc.

If you want to get potential clients from different countries, it’s much difficult than a local business. Before COVID-19, there are many trading shows worldwide, the companies usually prepare around USD 40K to 60K [1] budget for each attending.

But it’s hard to global traveling now (at least 2020 to 2023) right? The biggest benefit of lead marketing is, you can all make the leads appearing online, and don’t really need to talk to the potential client “face to face” in the same place. Instead, you can make the marketing to sales flow really happen online. 

 

How to do lead marketing?

Just said, lead marketing is a “series process” that collecting, converting potential customers into buyers, in the process, you must put several different marketing methods to drive the final result. We put the different methods together and build a “lead generation marketing funnel”.

 

Am I doing lead generation marketing?

The people who use one marketing method may have a question that they already have the first step in digital marketing so that you can have “online leads”, is that really a lead-gen method? Actually, only one marketing method (digital ADs, SEO, or social media) can not be called lead marketing. 

Because the process can not be connected, if you’re launching digital ADs, the metrics that you can optimize are CPC(cost per click), CPL(Cost per lead), the audience, the copywriting, and the banner of ads, but there are more factors that may infect the number of leads that you receive and the general cost that you pay.

The most common questions that I received are usually blaming the ADs didn’t bring leads effectively or bring qualified leads, but the client forgets that the content of their website (landing page), the mechanism for lead grabbing(inquiry form filling, e-book downloading, even the technical support chatbox) may also have more opportunities to get leads or filter qualified leads.

Actually, you shouldn’t give up when you didn’t get good payback from digital ADs, there are more marketing methods that you can use for building online lead channels. 

 

Lead marketing methods and lead funnel building

For controlling the overall lead marketing process, you should think carefully about what marketing method that you use, and you must connect different marketing methods by the touchpoint that you set for potential customers so that you can control every important factor, then optimize or pivot your marketing tactics.

In lead generation marketing funnel, we usually set six stages in it:

 

Top of the funnel (Lead generation marketing)

* Marketing’s responsibility.

Prospect/Visitors: Usually use digital Ads, SEO, social media, or online PR to get impressions, then get traffics from visitors. 

Leads: For undertaking potential customers from the impression methods, designing a good official website with attractive landing pages or detailed product pages that make a chance for appealing to them to provide their contact information in inquiry forms or e-book downloading.

 

Middle of the funnel 

* Both marketing and sales’ responsibility.

MQL (Marketing qualified lead): Measuring the lead is qualified enough for marketing, for example, is the potential buyer really interested in the product that you provide? You can track the digital footstep history of the client, to make sure this one is worth contacting for the next step.

SQL (Sales qualified lead): It means the potential buyer shows high motivation for buy the product that you offer, you can recognize them with the pain points, budget, and authority to purchase. The leads in this stage are worth contacting intently.

 

Bottom of the funnel

* Sales’ responsibility.

Sales Opportunities: As the lead is qualified as SQL, the lead shows high motivation for learning benefits from your product or your brand. The lead will deliver to the sales cycle, and the sales should contact the client intently and have a sales pitch to the client, then deal with the client.

Customer: A closed sale is someone who already paid for your product or service. But don’t make it the end of the selling opportunities from the client. Keep good maintenance with the client, they may buy your product or service the next time, or refer more potential clients to you, most of the time, this kind of lead is worth defining as a “SQL”  so that you can save more resources for new lead generation.

 

Conclusion

Lead generation marketing is the “must-have” first step of opening new opportunities for sales. Besides setting suitable marketing methods to build the lead generation marketing funnel, another important factor is building long-term relationships with the client that you earn from the marketing side.

It means the responsibilities of lead marketing is not only need to put on marketing’s head, it really needs sales to convert the leads to paid customers, then deal more orders, the method boost lead to deal is “lead management”, with whole lead management mechanism, lead marketing can also achieve and measure the success.

 

Reference

[1] How much should you spend on a trade show?