What Is Lead Generation in Digital marketing?

We live in an era where you don’t have to knock on doors to sell your products. It doesn’t matter if your audience is from a village or a city, nowadays anyone can sell anything worldwide by just sitting in their house with internet access. 

Right?

For example, people from India are dropshipping stuff via Print-on-demand to other parts of the world ( US, UK, Canada, etc.).

So that’s how the digital era has transformed businesses to reach people online; they don’t have to make door-to-door or newspaper campaigns to reach people. 

Nowadays, big brands like Amazon and Flipkart can focus on targeted audiences to convert them into paying customers by leveraging paid ads and search engine marketing. 

In the 21st century, both play a vital role in getting brands noticed and heard of setting the stage for most marketing campaigns you see on the internet. 

But some small companies are still struggling to leverage the digital platform to generate leads online for their business. 

Stats from jumplead.com says that almost 80% of marketing leads never turn into sales because there is a lack of nurture process in the digital medium. 

This is why every company has to well oiled the lead generation machine by having a solid funnel to their business, and mostly you don’t have to hunt for leads by using cheap tricks which won’t last for your company in the long term.

So if you are someone who is struggling to generate quality leads for your business. Then, this article is for you, and I will be covering all the what, why, and how you can leverage lead generation with digital marketing. 

What is Lead Generation in Digital Marketing?

Generating leads in digital marketing is just another medium to determine whether your prospects are interested in a product or service by running paid ads, giving them a lead magnet in the online medium in exchange for their data. 

There are many ways to generate leads to nurture them apart from paid ads, which I will be covering as well. 

But first

What a lead?

I am asking this question because one of my clients wanted me to generate leads as transaction material, but it isn’t, 

Right?

“A lead is a person who is interested in your product, service or band who might be a  potential paying customer in the future.” 

First, they might be interested in your product’s free trial or a lead magnet such as a free course, E-book, webinar, newsletter, and so on. Every lead is an opportunity to make your company grow further, so don’t treat him as a transaction element for your business.

However, your end goal is to make them pay for your product or service, but you need to nurture them somehow; they should feel like buying your product, not by forcing them with your sales team. 

Types of Leads

Sales are no fun until you understand what levels of lead you have because one of the significant factors that makes it complicated is that the small level companies are not aware of the marketing funnel. 

Like how to handle the cold, warm, or hot leads. 

Your company’s funnels must be structured in such a way that each segment of leads reaches its end goal. So, knowing what sales lead type is an inevitable topic for every business.

But first, what are cold, warm, and hot leads?

Let me explain, 

Cold Leads 

These are your targeted market, and you want them to know who you are, but they are unaware of your brand or have no connection to you or your company. 

You can target those prospects with your free lead magnet to get them into your funnel and make them warm to buy your product or service. 

Warm Leads 

These are people who are engaging with your content, such as liking, commenting on your post. They know who you are but have not yet purchased any of your products or services. 

They are likely to convert as a potential customer, but this is where you need to nurture them by sending emails, giving away free ebooks, and so on to build trust from your audience.

Hot Leads 

As promising from the above filtered, they are your precious gift and leads interested in buying your product or service. In another way, they are your long-term quality asset who are willing to buy as they have the budget for your product or service. 

They might refer to your product or service and has a better connection than anyone from your funnel. 

So, as I was researching on the web to write this article, 

I found another 4 types of leads that you can attract to convert them into paying customers. 

• Informational Qualified Leads
• Marketing Qualified Leads
• Sales Qualified Leads
• Product Qualified Leads 

Informational Qualified Leads

This type of leads comes from visiting your informational content or article from the search engine. IQL’s are the prospect who first got to know about you somewhere in the web search and later trying to become your prospect. 

These prospects are more like organic leads from your web content. You didn’t pay for them to come under your funnel.

Marketing Qualified Leads

Basically, MQLs leads are what you get from marketing initiatives, such as giving away free ebooks, e-newsletters, etc. 

People who come from your marketing efforts by paying the price to get them into your funnel. You have run paid ads such as Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn ads to get them into your funnel.

Sales Qualified Leads

SQL’s are people who show an immediate interest in your product or service; they are likely to give their contact information in a form for your sales team to follow up with them.

 To make them buy your product or service, have a good sales team who can handle the critical situation from the prospect’s question. 

Product Qualified Leads

PQLs also show their interest in your products and services, like signing up for free trials. After trying your products, they usually take action to buy. They might contact your sales team to ask questions and learn more about your offerings.

Why Is Lead Generation In Digital Marketing So Important?

Every business needs growth, and in order to get growth, they need leads to convert them into a paying consumer. 

As we have moved to a different era, we need to market ourselves better than the competitor. 

The old fashion of marketing won’t be that efficient compare to digital marketing because you can advertise yourself to a targeted audience,

If prospects are interested, you can retarget with paid ads and many other ways as we have evolved with software and tools to nurture them. 

For example, once leads come into our funnel, we can nurture them in many ways, such as drip marketing. You can automate the process to convert them into a paying customer or directly call them 1 on 1 in phone call to explain your product or service. 

These are few benefits of generating leads in the digital marketing space, whether it is b2b or b2c, 

• Generating leads has cut down lots of costs and energy.
• Getting the right people 
• The inflow of leads can be targeted with paid ads.
• Easy way to create brand awareness 
• Simple to measure and document 
• Providing personalized message to each persona 
• Affiliates & influencers marketing 

And so on, you have lots of ways to market your product or service from digital marketing, but you have to do it in the right way.

That’s what matters.

Inbound vs. Outbound Lead Generation

Have you ever heard of these terms, inbound and outbound marketing?

If yes, well and good,

If not, hear me out 🙂

No matter what industry you are in, you have to segment your marketing strategies so prospects can convert as they see your content or message.

 So it is essential to know what type of method you would like to do, whether inbound or outbound. Be clear before you start implementing the strategies. 

Inbound Lead Generation

“To put it simply, Inbound marketing strategies are used to focus on pulling the prospects to become a potential lead for your business.”

Basically, they might be your website visitors or social media followers who converted as a lead in exchange for your valuable content. This is a technique to pull the prospects into your marketing funnel.

Outbound Lead Generation

“On the other hand, it’s outbound marketing where you push people to get aware of your product or service by targeting paid ads, mass cold emails, or calling directly to your prospects.”

Outbound tactics require some type of paid delivery mechanism, which adds to the costs of marketing. As a result, the campaign tends to be driven toward selling rather than helping or educating.

In comparison, inbound marketing is more effective because prospects themselves likely to convert as a lead for your valuable content,

Stats show that more than 96% of visitors don’t intend to buy a product or service as soon as they visit your website. But they are likely to convert as a lead first to exchange for a free source or trial the product.

The other is outbound which costs 39% more than inbound leads, and that’s why marketers mainly focus on inbound, which offers better cost-effective and quality results. 

So now that you have got a better idea about what, why, and types. Let’s talk about how you can market to generate leads.

How to Generate Quality Leads With Digital Marketing?

Generating high-quality leads can be challenging, but what if you have a better approach to generating leads. Most of the lead generation process falls under these 3 compound, 

• Create Them
• Earn them
• Buy them 

When you see, without these 3 compounds, I don’t think any business would ever run successfully. 

Not sure of what I am saying? 

Let me explain, 

 how you can create, earn, buy them in the following section.

Create valuable content that attracts your prospects to become potential leads; you need to focus on what they want rather than what you need. 

For example, if you consistently follow and share informational content, your prospects will have some insight into your efforts to see what you are doing.

Not every customer is your customer until they want something from you.

but

According to statistics, marketing via content is 62% cheaper than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.

If you are good at content, then Earn an authority with the industry or in a marketplace. Building brand awareness is a must if you want to earn leads. 

There is a famous saying,

If your product fits the market needs, then the product or service itself sells. 

You just need to find out the gap to fit your product to the current state to desired state of the customers.

You need to build trust, authority from your audience to reach more and more people easily. 

Next and the final one, Buy them. 

Lol, don’t get excited; you can’t buy leads randomly. It’s unethical. 😛

What I meant was, you can spend money on paid ads such as Linkedin, Facebook, or Google to get leads in exchange for a lead magnet. 

Paid ads are suitable if you want to target a large audience from your segment, but they alone can’t bring you the ROI. You need to focus on nurturing once leads come into your funnel to filter and get potential customers for your product or service. 

So, let’s discuss the methods of generating leads. 

4 methods of generating leads for your business

The following 4 approaches may be used for all sizes of businesses in different industries as long as patience is shown in getting the results. These methods focus on the long-term growth of an organization.

The first essential method is, 

Content Marketing 

Content marketing is a way to build a great relationship with your audience, and it can be any channel such as social media, youtube, blog post, etc. 

It plays a vital role in all types of companies, whether b2b or b2c. 

Content is always a King, people like valuable content that are really useful for them. So if you focus on what people want, then the rest of the process automatically happens as it has to be. 

That’s how you should target people via content, 

But wait, how can I find what people want?

There are ways to find that; you can use the following techniques to get some idea. 

• Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to find out what people are looking for in your industry. 

• Use Quora to explore what people are looking for.

Once you get some idea, you can start writing informative articles that attract your potential leads. 

Use an eye-catching infographic.

Add video if essential.

The most important is to have popups on your website or a lead magnet that triggers people’s attention to sign up for the free webinar, download e-books, any other helpful resource that attracts them. 

Learn why content marketing is essential in lead generation. 

Search Engine optimization 

 SEO is another powerful way of optimizing your article and website to rank on google to get free organic traffic or to generate leads. 

Do you know that more than 95% of traffic goes to the first-page google search engine? 

Just imagine how good it would be to get traffic from google if you have great content and have leveraged SEO. 

It tells people that you have a great product and your brand has authority and credibility in your industry. 

Additionally, optimizing your website for search engines and users will allow you to outrank your competition.

 As long as your competition doesn’t use SEO, your company should earn a top spot in search results without difficulty.

So, generating leads via SEO is a golden opportunity. 

Learn more about SEO from my article: A complete guide to SEO

Paid ads Traffic 

Paid ads are an alternative to generating quick leads rather than waiting for SEO to work. You can advertise your product or service to attract your prospects in exchange for a lead magnet. 

You can run ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even Linkedin for b2b. 

Using an advertising platform is excellent, but you must have the correct targeted audience list to run your ads, and the essential thing is to have the right tools. 

Generate leads with 15+ Important Tools To Get More Targeted Leads

About 75% of marketing professionals choose to use Facebook for driving traffic and acquiring leads.

 Using this ad format, potential customers can submit their information from Facebook without ever leaving the site. 

Remarketing campaigns can also benefit from Lead Ads because your website visitors will see the adverts most of the time, and you can have them come back to your website by offering them an incentive.

Personalized Email Marketing 

Alothigrm change but your email open rate can’t if you have the personalized content for each persona to engage them.

Once you got your leads via organic or paid traffic, it essential to have an email marketing tool to engage your leads to convert them into paying customers. 

You might think who is going to read email every day but,

 Hubspot statistics show that all industries have an average opening rate of more than 20%. 

Check out the stats below to have a better idea, 

Nurturing your leads is necessary in order to convert them into paying customers. A powerful feature of email marketing tools is that you have the option of automating your messages.

Although you may be tempted to send content that features your products or services, remember to consider the needs of your users. 

Do something that will make them feel appreciated. Otherwise, you might see an increase in unsubscribe count rather than increasing your email list. 

Frequency Asked Questions