What are leads and why are they key to inbound marketing?

If a person comes to our website and we have no data, how can we know if this person is going to become a qualified or unqualified customer. This is a quite common mistake that companies make and even more common, they don't know how to solve it. In this blog you will learn a little more about leads, prospects and why they are so important in the inbound marketing methodology. 

In this blog you will read about: 

1. What is a lead? 
2. How to qualify leads? 
3. How to generate more leads? 
4. Process for generating leads. 
5. Key to inbound marketing  

Well, first we must clarify the term, what are leads? 

Perhaps you have heard of this term without knowing what it really represents within the hierarchy, a lead is any person who shows interest in our product or business through any of our communication channels available to the customer. After creating the buyer persona, knowing whether a person can become a lead or not for our business is as important as having a clear work plan. 

Not all leads are created in the same way and are qualified in the same way, they respond to a type of life cycle in which they can go from a visitor to a customer, for which they respond to two denominations: Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).  

The main differentiator between each is the stage each prospect is in according to their actions within our conversion path. For example, a customer may have clicked on our Facebook posts and read our blogs, but that doesn't mean they are ready to purchase our service or product. Unlike another customer who is at a more advanced stage where they have interacted very actively with our marketing campaigns and have already interacted with one of our more advanced conversion pieces. 

MQL: the first step. 

Within our inbound marketing strategy there are several levels of the Funnel or conversion funnel, in which we can be dealing with marketing leads that although they are not ready to close a sale, it is very likely that if they meet the characteristics and fit the profile of our ideal client, they can complete the conversion path. At this level we can be talking about people who have clicked on our publications, read our blogs, downloaded some type of eBook content from a Landing Page, signed up for a webinar, shared some type of our content through any communication channel. A marketing lead must be constantly nurtured so that it can move forward on its own on its conversion path with fresh content that helps them solve their problems.  

SQL: the version of your ideal customer is just one step away. 

A qualified sales lead are contacts that have taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer, such as: scheduling an appointment with an agent, a direct email, filling out a quote request form, etc. (you can define this according to your business) and the more quality content you can use to close your sale the more chance you have of closing one more sale. 

How to generate more leads? 

Lead generation is a process which should be planned from the early stages of planning your strategy. Consider a link in the realization of each of the pieces to achieve a coherent conversion path from start to finish. Also remember that this process will need a very well targeted paid advertising push on your buyer persona through the corresponding channels. It is always important to have alternatives when putting plans in place, no strategy is perfect, but it is about focusing as much as possible on your chances of attracting your ideal customers. 

What is the process I should carry out for lead generation? 

Learn, listen, analyze, and implement. As I mentioned earlier, strategies will never be perfect, and we always have opportunities to find a better solution to our customers' needs. Learn from them through online forms, successful or unsuccessful emails, and a good review of the conversations that happen through live chat and social media. 

Qualified leads, the key to inbound marketing 

Without qualified leads there is no inbound marketing, so we could sum up our process of successfully converting customers who make it to the end of the funnel. There are very useful tools that will help you to better plan your marketing strategy with the right content to achieve the right conversion funnel.