No matter what industry you are in, generating sales leads is critical. Every business sells something and whether it is a service or a product, you need to constantly generate leads that will transition into clients.
What Is A Sales Lead?
A sales lead is a person who has expressed interest in your product or service. In other words, they have “raised their hand” in some way letting you know that they are beginning their education process which may, or may not, lead to an eventual sale for your company.
In the online world, a lead is often thought of as anyone for whom you have a name and email address. This is not necessarily true. If the person voluntarily gave you their name and email address that essentially lets you know that they are interested, and that is a lead. However, if you have collected business cards at an event or gathered names and email addresses using a list broker, these are not leads; they are simply contacts.
What Is The Real Value Of A Lead?
A sales lead is the result of some marketing effort. A lot of time and effort is spent trying to get leads so it is important to understand the true value of a sales lead. It is also important to understand that without a good follow-up plan, a sales lead is a tremendously wasted opportunity. This is because a person who has voluntarily given you their information is not only letting you know they are interested, often they are asking you to contact them because they would like to continue the education process.
The two key benefits of a sales lead are that they are:
- They are educated. Through your marketing efforts, they have at least a basic understanding of your product or service which gives the sales team a good head start.
- They are interested. Again, through your marketing efforts, they understand what you are offering and are expressing to you that they may be interested in becoming a customer.
As you can see, a sales lead generated through your marketing efforts is incredibly valuable. Which leads to the next logical question…
How Do You Generate Sales Leads?
There are many “off-line” ways to generate leads including direct mail, print advertising, and cold-calling. However, these techniques are expensive and extremely time consuming. The ROI for these techniques can be rather low. A much more cost-effective way to generate leads is with online marketing.
There are many ways to leverage the Internet to generate leads. Techniques such as search engine marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, and landing pages. All of these techniques, when properly executed, are highly effective. It is important to know that you can’t simply send an email or throw up a webpage and expect to generate leads. There are very specific marketing tactics that must be employed. Things like the proper amount of content, positioning of the web form and image placement must be considered. It is very detailed work and to be effective, you should work with an experienced, highly trained online marketing agency.
If you have tried online marketing and have limited or no success, contact DirectiveGroup to see how we do things differently. We’d love to talk to you about how we’ve accomplished revenue generating online marketing results for our clients.
