The functioning of any company is not possible without customers. In order for a company to run its business and develop its offer, it must find customers ready to purchase the products and services it offers. In marketing nomenclature, the process of finding and acquiring customers is often called lead generation.

What is a lead generation?

A lead is any natural or legal person interested in the offer and consenting to be contacted by the offeror. Lead generation involves generating consumer interest in a brand’s products or services in order to convert it into sales.

What is a purchasing path?

interest in an offer does not necessarily mean that the customer will ultimately make a purchase. To acquire customers effectively, it is necessary to properly evaluate your leads. However, before we start assessing the acquired contacts, we should plan the so-called the purchasing path that the customer goes through, i.e. subsequent stages that influence the customer’s experience, at which the customer decides whether he moves to the next stage or gives up.

A good example here is the e-commerce industry. One of the main problems of small online stores is the abandonment of shopping carts by customers making a purchase. A purchase process that is too complicated may discourage the customer and cause him to make a purchase where the process will be easier for him.

Once we have planned a sales process that is understandable to our customers and the products or services we offer are sought after on the market, we can start generating leads.

One of the most popular marketing models describing the customer’s reaction to the offered product or service, also called the purchasing phase pyramid, is AIDA which is an acronym for the words: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. At Zielinet We prefer a slightly extended version of this model also supplemented with: “S” – Satisfaction, because we aim to build a positive customer experience.

What do the stages abbreviated as AIDAS actually mean?

• A – Attention – drawing the customer’s attention to a product or service
• I – Interest – customer’s interest in the benefits of having a selected product or service
• D – Desire – convincing the customer that they need the selected product or service to meet the need or solve the problem that made them interested in our offer
• A – Action – motivating the customer to take action related to making a purchase
• S – Satisfaction – closing the sale in a way that will allow the customer to experience satisfaction with their purchase

What do we gain from knowing these stages?

Depending on the stage of interest in purchasing the customer is at, the content of messages addressed to him should be different. In the early stages, the customer primarily needs information about the product or service itself, the benefits of having it and the properties that distinguish the product or service from the competition. When the customer has already decided that he needs the selected product or service, it is worth presenting the benefits of purchasing from us. This is the moment for promotional offers and offers to join loyalty programs.

One of the elements that influence a customer’s purchase decision is social proof. This means that customers are more willing to make a purchase if other people do the same. In the case of stationary sales, customers are usually first interested in the offer of a store that is busy but without queues. In the case of online sales, social proof will be positive opinions of other buyers.

How to classify leads?

The basic criteria that should be taken into account when classifying leads are the customer’s level of interest in the current offer and the value that a given lead can bring both at the stage of the first sale and throughout the entire cycle of purchases made by this customer in the future.

Basic lead categories:
1. contact leads (cql) also called potential leads (pql)
2. marketing leads (mql)
3. sales leads (sql)

Contact leads is such persons or entities who are not currently interested in our offer nevertheless consent to contact in the future. Potential leads are those who know that they will need the product or service offered in the future but are not currently ready to purchase. We usually deal with potential leads in the IT or telecommunications industry. If the customer already has a similar service, but is not satisfied with it or is not satisfied with the customer service from the current supplier, and is bound by a fixed-term contract, the termination of which involves contractual penalties, he will not be ready to change the supplier. However, once the current contract expires, the customer may be interested in purchasing a competing service. Due to the significant delay in the purchase stage from establishing marketing contact, many companies do not treat such contacts as leads.

Marketing lead is one who takes independent actions related to our offer, e.g. by filling out the contact form or subscribing to the newsletter.

Sales lead is a contact who is interested in purchasing and expects a specific offer.

Another classification of leads often used by salespeople is to rank them according to their level of readiness to buy. So we have:

1. cold leads
2. warm leads
3. hot leads

The first category includes contacts who follow our offer but are not interested in purchasing it.

Warm contacts are those who are interested in purchasing, but not at this time. Warm leads usually include contacts who declare their readiness to purchase within 3 months.

Hot leads are customers ready to make a purchase and looking for the best offer for them.

Efficiency indicators

Customer acquisition can take various forms and take place on various customer communication channels. However, these activities should be measurable so that the effectiveness of the selected marketing strategy can be assessed. Strategy is planning how to search for customers and present the offer to them, as well as the expected results. When creating a strategy, it is worth considering the following indicators:

• CPL – cost per lead – it is an indicator that allows you to determine the effectiveness of using the marketing budget. This indicator is calculated by dividing the total amount of expenses incurred on lead generation by the number of leads obtained.
• CVR – conversion rate – which indicates what percentage of acquired leads result in an actual sale. We calculate it by dividing the number of leads that resulted in the sale being finalized by the number of all leads we have. This indicator allows you to assess whether the lead generation process has been well addressed
• Lead value – it is calculated by multiplying the average sales value in a given period, e.g. in a month, by the value of the CVR indicator for that period.

Comparing the lead value indicator with the value of the CPL indicator allows us to determine whether the implemented marketing activities are profitable for us.

How to generate leads?

Unlike brand marketing, which involves creative activities aimed at associating positive emotions with a given brand or creating its image as a leader in a given industry, the lead generation process has the character of measurable activities in the area of direct marketing aimed at establishing direct contact with the customer and convincing him to make a purchase. In recent years, the customer acquisition process has focused in particular on digital marketing, i.e. reaching a wide range of potential customers with the offer via electronic media. In this group, we can distinguish the following areas of activity:

1. seo marketing
2. e-mail marketing
3. SMS/MMS marketing
4. e-marketing
5. telemarketing
6. networking

As part of direct marketing, i.e. focused on contact with the customer, we distinguish two categories of activities: passive and active marketing. The first one, also called inbound, involves presenting our offer and ensuring its availability to the customer so that the potential customer decides to contact us. A common example describing this form of marketing activities is opening the doors of a restaurant overlooking a busy street. Passers-by, tempted by the delicious smells and pleasant music coming from the restaurant, decide to go inside.

In internet marketing, passive marketing includes all activities related to optimizing a website for search engines, creating the content valuable to the customer as well as affiliate systems and advertisements that generate traffic on our website.

In turn, active (outbound) marketing includes, in particular, sending e-mails, SMS/MMS or telephone contacts to a selected group of potential customers. This form of marketing activities can ensure sales in the short term, but usually does not allow for acquiring loyal and premium customers.

Summary

Generating leads is a complex process that requires work and patience, but is essential in every company. However, lead generation alone does not equal sales. Proper handling of acquired leads is important. Two approaches dominate lead generation offers available on the market. The first one involves the service provider specializing in the use of a selected communication channel with the client, e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, mass mailing. Such a strategy can give us good results as long as our sales process is adapted to sales in a given communication channel. The disadvantage is that we are limited mainly to customers using the selected form of distance selling.

Another approach is a catch-all strategy, which involves integrating multiple contact channels into one system. This allows for unified communication and provides a complete history of contacts with the customer, regardless of the contact channel. The disadvantage is that such unified communication usually does not take into account the specificity of selected contact channels, resulting in a smaller number of leads in individual channels.

At Zielinet we try to combine these two approaches. If the topic of lead generation is interesting to you, I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter to receive information about current content published on our blog. If you want to learn more about our services, please contact us.