Lead generation is the process of attracting and identifying potential customers (also called leads). For performance-hungry B2B companies, a constant stream of new leads that can be converted into paying customers is essential.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, the lead generation process is quite complex. In this blog, you’ll find out how lead generation works in practice and which team should be responsible for the process.
definition of lead generation
Let’s say your company is a top-class football club based in Rotterdam . Thanks to your popularity, many companies are interested in partnering israel number data with you and putting their logo on your jerseys. All of these companies are potential customers, so-called leads.
The problem is that these companies often don’t know how to contact you. If these companies find their way to your website, they behave like normal visitors: they look around but don’t buy anything and don’t leave any contact information. This way, these companies remain anonymous and unreachable for you.
The solution is called lead generation: This collective left alone with their crm-related questions term describes the process by which you address your target audience and get them to provide you with their contact information.
In other words: Lead generation is the very beginning of your sales process . All leads acquired through lead generation end up in your sales funnel. There, your lead generation strategy decides whether these leads send you their (payment) data or not.
By the way, more leads are not automatically better, because only high-quality leads are really valuable. Which leads you classify as “hot leads” is entirely up to you and depends on the type of company you have, your offer, your industry and your target group.
This is how lead generation has developed
Lead generation is by no means a new concept, as lead generation has been practiced since humans began trading. The prerequisite for every trade is customers who are willing to trade meat for spices or textiles, for example. In the past, a good afghanistan business directory reputation was essential for a trader. Anyone who offered a good product and treated their customers well could build their business on recommendations.
With the advent of mass media, this changed. Companies began to engage in lead generation on a large scale. Marketing teams would obtain (buy!) a list of contacts that the sales team would then cold call.
Fortunately, this situation was short-lived. The Internet, social media and effective ad blockers shifted the power back into the hands of consumers. Consumers had simply had enough of the aggressive marketing techniques.
Today, successful brands put their customers’ needs first and use a combination of inbound and outbound marketing to achieve the best results. For example, a lead is acquired through valuable content (inbound), while the sales team follows up by phone (outbound).
How does lead generation work?
Before you start generating leads, you should first define who you want to target. If you don’t know your target audience, you’ll miss out on many sales opportunities.
So start by creating one or more buyer personas for your ideal customer. Use market research and data from your customer file to create a list of your customer demographics. Then, write down the challenges your target audience faces and how your product or service can help them. Armed with this information, you can then start generating leads.
The first step is to cast a wide net to get your brand out there to your target audience . There are a number of ways to do this, both paid and organic. Some promising strategies include: