Lead Conversion: Successfully convert B2B leads to customers
The customer journey of each of your potential customers is an individual path with different touchpoints. Lead conversion is achieved when the qualified lead converts to a customer.
What is a lead conversion?
Lead conversion is a part of the process that a potential customer goes through in the sales funnel of your B2B company. In this process, before the campaign begins, marketing staff determine the stage at which the prospect should be transitioned to sales. This means that each time a customer is contacted, a check is made to see if they can be successfully moved on in the sales funnel.
In this regard, lead conversion is a process that is based on exact specifications like a guide for each potential customer on their journey. Only in this way is it possible to compare and subsequently evaluate the different paths that each lead passes through on the customer journey.
The goal of lead conversion is to generate a promising paying customer for your business from a prospect who has come to your website.
The Sales Funnel Journey
The sales funnel describes the customer journey that every desired customer in the B2B sector goes through. The goal of marketing here is to convert the prospect into a paying customer for your successful business through targeted information and interaction.
In this process, the sales funnel is divided into the areas:
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Top of Funnel (TOFU)
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Middle of Funnel (MOFU)
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Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
At each of these sub-areas it is crucial to pick up your potential customers and provide them with important information. At the heart of your strategy are these four phases to turn an unknown prospect into a qualified lead:
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Attract
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Engage
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Convert
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Delight
In the course of lead nurturing, you can determine what status your target customer has reached in the sales funnel, so that you can then accompany them to the next stage.
Source: Customer Journey according to Pedalix
Successful Lead Conversion
The foundation of your successful lead conversion is defining each stage of your online campaign. Your marketing should be able to control, monitor and evaluate each step.
Within the entire process, these sub-areas need to be actively worked on:
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Attract relevant traffic
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Identify SQLs
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Winning new customers
Each of these steps requires the utmost attention from your employees and must be recorded and evaluated in all details in the company's own database.
This way the lead conversion is successful and leads to promising contacts.
Attract relevant traffic
The first step is to attract the appropriate target customers to your website through content marketing. In this regard, it is elementary to find coordinated content that addresses the wants and needs of your ideal customers. This includes, but is not limited to:
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Corporate Blog
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Newsletter
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Guidebook
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Industry information
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Tutorials
Only if the content of your messages offers added value to the potential customer will he be willing to give you his contact details and enter into a further dialogue with your company.
Source: ELPRO Company Blog
Collect leads
Once you've registered your leads' initial contact using conversion elements, the next step is to nurture their existing interest. Lead magnets are a significant component in getting desirable customers to share their contact information.
Lead magnets such as:
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Case Studies
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Product calculators
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Checklists
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E-books
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Trial versions
are helpful tools to convince your potential customers to open up to your company.
Interested parties will share their contact information with you in exchange for valuable information.
Collecting leads is thus an important element of lead nurturing in the sales funnel.
Lead Nurturing
Particularly in the B2B segment, where decision-making processes leading to a sale are time-consuming, the greatest attention must be paid to nurturing your potential customers.
The further the target customer has progressed in the customer journey, the more painful a loss would be.
Missing information or lack of marketing attention would have fatal consequences in this case.
With structured and regular email marketing, you have the option to provide your desired customers with additional information.
In doing so, make sure to always respond to the needs and wishes of the customer without transmitting too extensive advertising messages.
Source: Personalized Newsletter from Pedalix Software
Recognizing Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
The Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is the goal of every lead nurturing. With the help of well thought-out lead management, you can turn prospects into qualified discussion partners for your sales department.
If marketing and sales have uniformly defined the characteristics for the SQL before the start of the campaign, the transition to sales is smooth.
In this case, the sales department can start immediately with the beginning of the sales negotiations.
Source: Customer Profile from Pedalix Software
Acquiring new customers
When acquiring new customers in the B2B segment, it is crucial not only to accompany each potential customer attentively through the customer journey, but also to record and evaluate the information gained.
A well-managed customer profile with accurate and up-to-date data is the basis for every lead conversion along the way in the sales funnel.
Only when you have learned about all the needs and desires of your target customers within the framework of the customer journey can the sales department ultimately conduct successful sales talks.
Conclusion
Lead Nurturing has become an important part of acquiring new customers and business partners in B2B in the digital age. In the process, prospects pass through numerous stations in the customer journey until they mature into an SQL for sales.
In this context, the sales funnel is a proven means of determining the market maturity of customers. With the help of the appropriate tools, it is possible to identify each potential customer at the individual points of the sales funnel via touchpoints, to bring them further and ultimately to convert them into a customer.
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