Leads: Discover what they are and why they are so important for your business

Leads are commercial opportunities for your business; they're the starting point of every sales process. To understand the concept of a lead, we need to understand that every product needs someone to buy it. A lead emerges as the embodiment of the target audience for your product or service.

The concept of a lead became widely known with the emergence of content marketing, but contrary to what some people think, the concept of a lead predates content marketing or even inbound marketing. They have long existed in active prospecting strategies. A lead is any potential customer who shows any interest in a company and, for some reason, leaves their contact information—in other words, they represent a business opportunity.

What is Lead Generation?

There are countless ways to obtain leads. We call lead generation the set of strategies for capturing them. We can divide lead generation into:

Active or OutBound Marketing Strategies for Lead Generation: Through company contact lists or even using BIG DATA, it is possible to obtain data on company names for segmentation and active commercial prospecting. In these cases, the lead is typically used by B2B market companies where it is unlikely that they will search for product information or be present on social networks.

Passive or Inbound Marketing Strategies for Lead Generation: Leads can be generated through users' search for information, as is the case with Search Network Marketing, where either through ads or through organic search, Leads are generated most of the time as top of the sales funnel leads.

Leads vs. Visitors

Social media is a success, and the best part is the ease of generating leads, for a simple reason: profiles are easily identified and contain a good deal of important segmentation information. The main drivers of this are the giant technology corporations, namely Google and Facebook, which, in their fierce competition for market share, have increasingly concentrated social networks and, with it, the integration of their users' data, which greatly benefits digital marketing.

The biggest dilemma in lead generation is websites. They're your virtual billboard, and depending on how much value your brand adds to the market, they can receive millions of hits and significantly help you generate business, especially if they're attractive, responsive, and packed with relevant content. But what if, more than just increasing your visitor statistics, you could contact them instead of waiting for them to contact you? Don't you think that would significantly increase your leads and, consequently, your business? I can assure you, it certainly would.

Even if a visitor is enchanted by your website, familiar with your product, and finds the solution to their needs, there's still a gap between their choice and the actual purchase. This gap can cause them to give up, and you can fill it by reaching out to them first. Humans are driven by stimuli, and often all that's needed to close the sale is an incentive.

At this point the key word is interaction.

Create tools within your website to encourage your customers to leave their information, especially their email address.

In this case, one of the best ways to capture leads is through landing pages, with attractive action buttons that encourage visitors to click through in exchange for an offer. Pop-ups inviting them to subscribe to your newsletter can also be a good option.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Leads always have a degree of qualification and a moment of conversion in the discovery journey. Lead nurturing is the process through which we feed the lead with messages aimed at improving their understanding of the product and awakening their awareness of the need and solution of the product proposal. How to do this is a subject for another article.

Will every lead be a customer?

Not necessarily. Turning a visitor into a lead is an important step, but what will convert them into customers is the relationship your company maintains with them.

It's no use having an incredible marketing strategy that captures thousands of leads and provides appropriate content to nurture them if your sales team isn't aligned with this plan and your product doesn't meet expectations.

You need to deliver what was promised and work within your real possibilities.