How Many Types of Lead generation : Types, Strategies, Importance, Example and Lead Generation Tools

Types of Lead Generation in Marketing:

• The three types of leads involve prospect, marketing qualified lead, and sales qualified lead.
• Lead generation campaigns are done to attract potential customers and turn them into actual customers.
• The fundamentals of lead generation campaigns involve a clearly defined audience, content/offer, budget, measurement, and lead nurture plan.
• The attention of customers is divided into 4 stages that include attract, convert, close, and delight.

Types of Lead Generation strategies

You want to increase sales in your business, but before sales, you should know how to generate leads. Sales will be possible only when leads will come in business. Some businesses get leads quickly.

Do such businesses have some lead generation engine?

This article will decode this. Article is divided into two parts:

1. Leads and basics of lead generation

2. Lead generation campaign (End-to-end campaign will be designed and then it will be shoot.)

1: Types Of Lead

The 3 types of leads are as follows:

1. Prospect:

• It means somebody has reached out to your business. At present, He/She is a prospect only.
• It means a person who not showed you any intention of buying your product or service.  He/she only says, “I want to know about you. There would be many competitors like you.”
• This is a prospect.

2. MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead):

A marketing qualified lead is that when your marketing team says, “This is the database.  50 people reach out to us. Out of 50 people, 20 or 30 people are those who send a right and correct query in business after reading the marketing messages sent by the company.”

3. SQL (Sales Qualified Lead):

• SQL(Sales Qualified Lead) is formed out of MQL(Marketing Qualified Lead).
• SQL means when your sales team/sales executive team/senior team of sales says, they had word with this particular MQL and it is the possibility that he/she would purchase the product.
• Sales qualified lead is time-bound.

• Your sales team out of their experience may say, “The customer will purchase in the next 3 to 6 months or 1 to 2 days. It depends upon the product.”
• This is known as SQL.

2: Lead Generation Campaign

• It is a process or machinery that should keep on working.
• It is a process through which any prospect from anywhere or at any time shows interest in your product or service after getting attracted.
• If somebody shows interest in your lead generation campaign, it means he/she is allowing you to contact him/her and convert him/her into paying customers from potential customers.

• The actual business is generated only when a potential customer turns into a paying customer by making an actual transaction in your bank.

3: Fundamentals of Lead Generation Campaign

A successful lead generation campaign needs the following fundamentals:

1. Clearly defined audience:

For example:

• Many times, when entrepreneurs are asked, “Who is your audience or customer?” They answer that all customers and all companies are my customer base.
• It is important to know here that the company cannot be a customer. The CEO, CFO, CXO, and COO of the company will be a person that signs the cheque for your payment. So, the customer is a person.

You have to be careful of the clearly defined audience.

2. Content/Offer: It means what you are trying to tell your clearly defined audience, some offers or some sales promotion you are giving to the audience, and the form of content or marketing communication is reaching them.

3. Budget: You need to do budgeting.

4. Measurement: You need to find the following:

• How you will measure the actual success of the lead generation campaign run by you?
• Are you able to earn ROI as per your investment or not?

5.  Lead nurture plan: As you have leads in your system, how would you nurture them?

Nurture means, if a customer of yours does not purchase a product from you for the first time but the customer is your potential customer. The customer may make purchases in the future.

You need to nurture the customer in the following ways:

• By providing some offers to the customer
• Sending birthday wishes to the customer

• Sending the customer to site visits with the sales team
• Providing some offer for the customer’s family

Nurturing is the stage to nurture potential customers, as it is sure that they will provide the revenue in the future.

4: Inbound Marketing Campaigns

Inbound marketing campaigns are very much successful and beneficial. Inbound means in and bound. It means the customer is inbounding in your business.

The customer is himself/herself approaching your business; you are not going to him/her.

The attention of your customer is divided into the following four stages:

1. Attract:

• It means when you are attracting customers with your marketing messages. This is the first step of your lead generation campaign.
• Your customer may get attracted to your marketing.
• Your customer may also say, “It is not good. Messages are not good. If the marketing of the company is not good, then how the company will do well for me.”
• Such a customer will never be your customer he/she will never fill your forms and never visit your lead generation campaign. You will lost that customer.

2. Covert: At this stage, the person who is a potential customer is attracted to your company.

3. Close: The customer has reached the SQL stage from the MQL stage. Your salesperson will do the following:

• Call to the customer

• Talk to the customer
• Understand the customer’s point of view
• Understand customer’s burning problem

Close the customer by actually taking the payment for product or service has taken.

4. Delight: It means when you will provide world-class customer service to your customer. This will make the customer very happy.

He/she will look forward to transacting with the company and also refer to his/her family.

A very good example of attract, convert, close, and delight is:

• You go to a big brand showroom for purchasing a coat, a shirt, or a tie.
• As you go to the showroom, you get attracted to the right messages.
• They firstly ask your name and after that,   they asks about your need, the type of shirt you are looking for, the size of  shirt, and the shirt brands you like.
• Do you want a button at the collar or not?
• After that, they will gradually take you towards closure.
• They will show you specific brands and provide offers on those specific brands.
• They will also tell you that today you will get free products worth Rs. 500 on shopping of Rs. 6000.
• Finally, they will delight the customer. It means you will be provided with specific discounts and coupons on your birthday and anniversary.

This is done because they know this customer will come again and give us more revenue.

5: Topics of Lead Generation Campaign

The topics you should know for creating lead generation campaign are as follows:

1. Marketing tools: You  need to understand the following:

1. E-mail
2. Social media
3. Blogs
4. Missed call campaign
5. WhatsApp for business

2. Landing page designing: It is very important for you to have knowledge about the landing page and its design.

For example:

• You have noticed that every time for a webinar you need to do the registration.
• You do the registration through a link provided to you.
• You can open the link either on phone or desktop/laptop.
• You are asked to enter the information such as your name, telephone/mobile number, name of the city you belong to, and the place where you reside.

• All the information is asked from you to contact you, to be in touch with you, and build up a strong relationship.
• The page where you fill the information is known as the landing page 📃.

It is important to know that there will be a different landing page for every campaign you start.

All campaigns cannot have the same landing page.

If you have multiple customers, multiple products, and multiple marketing campaigns are running, then different landing pages are required to know at the backend, which product’s landing page is giving you maximum leads.

If all leads come on the same page, then you would not be able to differentiate the campaign giving the maximum leads.

3. Right offers: It is important for your customer to know the right offer. Make sure that you are not giving the wrong offer to the right customer because this will annoy the customer and he/she will leave you.

Make sure offers should differ from your marketing campaigns.

4. Online ads and retargeting: It is very important for you to understand online ads and retargeting.

For example:

Many times, you would have noticed that:

• You visited an e-commerce website such as Amazon.com or Flipkart.com.
• You liked a product there, clicked it, but do not purchase it, and do not complete the transaction.
• You left the e-commerce website page and log in to your Facebook account to check posts of your friends.
• As you check your Facebook page, visit any other website, or read the news on the economictimes.com page you see the ads of the same product you clicked on the e-commerce website page.
• How did this happen? Is the product following you?
• Yes, it is following you. This is known as retargeting.

Your customer has somehow shown some interest in your product. He/she has shown the interest but maybe:

• He/She is not able to purchase it immediately.
• He/She is not able to understand.

• He/she may want to talk to you.

The customer is somehow your prospect as he/she has shown interest in the product.

It is your responsibility to convert him/her from prospect to customer.

6: Execution of Lead Generation Campaign

• Hire online lead generation agency:
• You should hire an online lead generation agency during execution that perfectly executes this work for you.

• Small business owners or shopkeepers cannot afford to hire an agency due to fewer finances.
• There are many freelancers and solopreneurs in our country who can do this work for you at very low rates.
• E-mails, social media, and blogs all are sources/channels of lead generation. All the information from these channels goes to the landing page.
• It goes to offer and lead generation campaigns from the landing page.
• The process includes the following 3 steps:

Channel → Landing page → Final offer and lead closure

The day you will understand the process or system properly, your lead generation will move very quickly and you will be able to convert leads into customers.

7: Lead Scoring

An important question is: Does every lead coming into your system is the right lead?

Ideally, every coming lead should be the right to lead.

If the customer is filling my form, then it may be that he/she is your customer.

The get the answer to the question is know about lead scoring.

It is very important to find out the lead score.

The best way of doing lead scoring is as follows:

• You should do scoring of all coming leads between 1 to 5.
• Give the maximum score to the lead that showed maximum interest.

For example:

• There is a car brand such as Maruti or Ford.

• Every car brand before launching a new car launches a proper website, this is known as a microsite.
• You may have seen this with Tata, Maruti, Ford, or any other brand.
• A new website of the new car is designed before the launch of the car and the website is known as a microsite. The details given on the microsite include:
• Features of the car
• Show the interior of the car
• Some videos of the influencers
• All information about the car

This site has all information and along with lead generation forms are there. Your customer spends how much time on the website.

He/She tries to study about features of the car. Finally, he/she checks the pricing. At last, he/she shares the information on your lead generation form.

If the customer fills the form and all the required fields, then the customer is high-quality lead for you. You can give this lead a score of 4 to 5.

The customers, who exit your website after giving little information and increase the bounce rate, give them a score of 1 to 3.

The customer who shares only his/her e-mail id and not interested in sharing his mobile number due to less interest in the car and spam calls. Give the only score of 1 to 3 to such customers.

You have to follow those customers, whom you have given a score of 4 to 5 as they will turn into customers from prospects.

Conclusion:

• Make a lead generation campaign to increase sales
• Use good messages to attract customers
• Use lead nurture plan to turn a potential customer into an actual customer