Lead generation

BANT - You can use these criteria to define "leads" for your company

• Budget: What budget does the prospect have available
• Authority: Does the interested party have decision-making authority
?
• Need: Is there a need in his company?
• Time: In what time frame should the investment take place?

Basics for lead determination

The determination of a lead is related to the strategic direction of a marketing campaign. In order to develop a clear, industry- and company-specific marketing strategy and to save resources for the company, marketers should clarify the following questions before launching the lead generation marketing campaign

• Quantity or quality: Generate a mass of leads (e.g. traffic) or only specific leads (e.g. sales-qualified leads)?
• Medium/network: Through which channels (e.g. email marketing, social media, blog) does the company receive the targeted leads?
• Push or pull: How is the campaign set up and implemented?

What is lead generation? - Leads in the sales funnel

Lead generation takes place in each of the three stages of the sales funnel (describes the steps of the sales process). These stages are typically:

1. Awareness (upper part of the funnel or Top of the Funnel): The prospect becomes aware of his problem or need. They start looking for solutions. In doing so, they come across relevant products or services.
Consideration (middle part of the funnel or middle of the funnel): The prospective customer analyzes and evaluates these products or services and contacts the providers.
2. Decision (bottom of the funnel or bottom of the funnel): The potential buyer makes a decision that solves their problem and meets their requirements.

You should focus on content that offers your leads added value at every stage of the buying process when generating leads. In the beginning, you should attract attention without directly urging them to buy. Content such as e-books, checklists and white papers that are relevant and informative for your users are particularly suitable for lead generation in this phase. Most consumers nowadays do their research online before making a purchase. Your content should therefore support users in solving problems in advance. If you attract the attention of potential leads during this information phase, they are more likely to decide to purchase your product or service.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

MQLs are people who have already come into contact with your marketing and have shown a positive response. They are in the phase in which interest in your company has been signaled. They would like to receive more information about your offer by contacting you directly. However, please note that this does not necessarily have to result in an intention to buy and ultimately a purchase.

In the digital world, a popular method for generating MQLs is to offer information that is valuable to the target group in exchange for contact details. Examples include a checklist, a whitepaper, downloading software trials or free e-books on the landing page.

Marketing Qualified Leads are converted to SQLs when people are even more interested in your offer after receiving more engaging information.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales Qualified Leads, abbreviated as SQLs, are what every sales representative is most happy about. These are people who have signaled their interest in your offer several times through interaction with your marketing. These leads have already been pre-qualified and can be passed on to sales so that they can, for example, conduct a sales conversation and complete the purchase process.

We also refer to people who directly book or initiate a sales call as SQLs and thus strongly communicate their intention to buy. These valuable leads do not go through your marketing department first, but as they go straight to the sales call without any detours, the categorization as SQLs is justified here.

The classic approach to lead generation is known as dialog marketing. Marketing measures are taken to establish contact with interested parties and to receive a response from them. The response can take the form of a purchase, for example, with which the customer also discloses their contact details for further use. The strategy has evolved to the present day and marketers can use other types of lead generation.

Basically, lead generation can be divided into offline and online generation.

Offline lead generation:

• Trade fairs or promotional stands - Trade fair appearances offer a good opportunity to generate leads. You have the opportunity to have an unfiltered and personal conversation with visitors. If they turn out to be interested and relevant, they can even be classified directly as SQL in the best case scenario.
Phone calls - inbound (incoming) and outbound (outgoing). Legal regulations on cold calling must be observed for outbound calls!
• Network events - Similar to a trade fair appearance, you also have the opportunity to have a personal conversation with potential leads at meetings of your network or other cooperation events.
  Of course, events such as seminars or conferences can also contribute to networking. Personal contacts with interested parties are more suitable than if these leads first have to go through the entire process of qualifying a sales funnel.
Print - Advertisements in magazines, discount coupons, direct mail, magazines and catalogs, even flyers are typical tools for offline lead generation. However, these can be perceived as annoying by the addressee and therefore have a negative effect.

Digital or online lead generation:

• Website - a typical way in which good leads can be generated is via provided relevant information on your homepage or on special landing pages. This can be, for example, the download of a software trial version of an eBook, a white paper or a checklist. These are "exchanged" for contact information. Be sure to consider data protection when requesting data. There is also the possibility that the more data that is requested, the fewer people could register on the form. You should not ignore these points and keep forms short and concise.
• Landing pages, blogs or online magazines, search engine optimization (SEO) - With appealing content marketing and search engine optimization, you can increase a high, target group-specific reach. In this way, you promote lead generation. However, this only works if you know your prospects and potential future customers, their online behavior and their problems and wishes. Only then can you create the right content for your visitors' customer journey. If you keep these points in mind when creating and optimizing content, you can create coherent content for the reader with little effort. This content should be comprehensible, sensibly linked and hyperlinked.
• Email marketing - Sending newsletters is also one of the typical methods for generating leads. It should be noted that negative effects on the company image cannot be ruled out if users receive newsletters for which they did not originally sign up directly. Express consent must be given by the customer in order to generate a data record. A double opt-in procedure is common here - i.e. a double declaration of consent to receive advertising.
• Social media presence - LinkedIn and Xing are primarily used for lead generation in the B2B sector. Other social networks are more suitable for B2C communication (e.g. Instagram or Facebook).
  B2B lead generation via LinkedIn works either by directly addressing the target persons via direct messages, in which case, however, these are cold leads, or via paid lead ads (lead gen forms). Lead ads on LinkedIn are advertisements where people can enter their contact details directly into LinkedIn, usually in exchange for specific content. The advantage of this is that the target group does not have to leave the platform and then possibly jump off again on your website - lead generation is smoother, so to speak.
• Advertisements on search engines (SEA), search engine marketing (SEM), paid ads - are among the most important and successful channels for lead generation in the marketing process. If you advertise on Google, for example, you can reach the target groups and potential leads relevant to your company with your message. Clicking on the ad usually takes the user to the company's website, which ideally contains a contact form. The primary goal of many Google Ads campaigns is lead generation. With Google as the world's most widely used search engine and the partner network, you get an enormous reach. With the help of analysis tools, you can access real-time evaluations of your campaigns at any time. This also simplifies the networking of relevant online marketing channels.

Incentives are created for many types of lead generation. These are intended to motivate potentially interested parties to start a purchase process. These can be special offers, discounts or free test products, for example.

Cold leads

A cold lead is the contact details of a person who is unfamiliar with your company and your offer. This is also referred to as cold calling. Legal regulations must be observed for this type of lead generation (Act against Unfair Competition (UWG), Section 7 Unreasonable Harassment).

Since cold leads require the most persuasion, they are not exactly popular for sales. A comparison can be drawn with the countless spam emails that are sent out every day. Companies acquire a long list of cold leads to send their emails to. The senders hope that enough readers will accept their message and be convinced by the offer.

Cold leads do not necessarily have to be of low quality. When approaching these contacts, you must bear in mind that they may have little or no idea of your existence. You must therefore first develop, sort and qualify the cold leads in order to carry out a sales pitch.

With some types of lead generation, you need to consider legal aspects. Data protection is a high priority when generating and processing leads. When it comes to personal data of interested parties or potential customers, the GDPR must be taken into consideration. Companies and authorities as well as private individuals and lawyers are particularly sensitized to this topic. When it comes to lead generation, data protection is therefore a major and important issue that you need to address.

Under the GDPR, you are obliged to provide full transparency about the stored personal data at any time upon request. This also applies to the origin and use of the data. Therefore, pay attention to which data you request from interested parties.

Data protection is not only so important because of the GDPR, it also ensures that your target group has confidence in your company. After all, the more secure prospective customers feel with you, the more willing they are to disclose their contact information. Your high level of commitment to data protection therefore has a positive effect on your lead generation.

A typical example of data protection is the inclusion of an opt-out option when registering for a newsletter. An opt-in button is mandatory when passing on data in a web form. The customer must expressly give their consent. Otherwise, no data record may be generated by the company. A common solution for this is a double opt-in procedure.

Creating awareness

Lead generation is now also used to raise awareness and interest in the specific company among the target group. Lead generation methods are increasingly being used to optimize the results of brand awareness practices, for example.

Insights from inbound lead generation (e.g. incoming calls) can help to produce more relevant and convincing content in order to generate awareness. Outbound lead generation, or outbound generation, is therefore an opportunity to consolidate this awareness among the desired target group in a direct and targeted manner.

Optimization of offer, processes & co.

Modern lead generation is characterized by encouraging promising leads to engage with a brand, company, product or service through a personalized approach and constant exchange. This is why marketing measures such as the generation of qualified leads make it possible to do more than simply collect data. Rather, companies can gain helpful insights from customer feedback, which can be used to optimize the conversion rate, product development, sales and customer service, for example.

Acquiring new customers

B2B companies and brands with a range of high-priced products use sites with contact forms to generate a list of potential customers. Providing free information on the company website in return for contact information can be beneficial here. In e-commerce, these pages can also be used for generating customer lists and planned email marketing.

Lead generation is still seen as a single stage of the customer journey through the sales funnel. However, the use of lead generation measures is much more flexible and wide-ranging than the initial definition suggests.

In the past, the everyday life of sales employees was characterized by making contact with potential customers and presenting their products or services to them. This is how lead generation used to be practiced.In today's digital age, we have been observing a change for years: the internet is omnipresent and everyone has easy access to information. Customers have the opportunity to inform themselves comprehensively on the web. Search engines, social media, blogs and other online channels are available around the clock. This means that consumers can research products or services without having to contact the sales department of the respective company.

Effective lead generation through teamwork between marketing and sales

The developments in the purchasing process described above also have an impact on the tasks of sales and marketing. While the two disciplines used to have clearly separate areas of work, nowadays lead generation is more of a joint challenge. Marketing is taking on an increasingly important role and is no longer limited to providing and handing over a lead list to sales.