6 Tips to Successfully Generate Sales Leads
Visited the website, did some research, got curious - and signed up for the newsletter: This is what the path of a potential customer might look like.
For example, as soon as they leave their email address, you have successfully generated a so-called lead. But: Not every email subscriber becomes a paying customer.
The goal of every company is to generate high-quality sales leads - because these promise the greatest buying potential.
But what is the difference between a conventional lead and a high-quality sales lead? And how does successful lead management work?
What is a Sales Lead?
For every company, sales leads are the prospects with the greatest potential: they are the perfect ideal candidates for sales to bring suitable services and products to the buyer.
A lead can be an individual or a company, for example. When we talk about a qualified sales lead (SQL), we are talking about a solution-seeking contact with the right budget and real potential to buy your product.
Not All Leads Are the Same
Depending on which readiness to buy a lead signals, it belongs to a different lead category.
Put simply, this means that there are good leads with potential and less good leads with a lower probability of purchase. Therefore, the goal is to get as many qualified sales leads into the sales database as possible.
The dilemma: There have always been internal difficulties between marketing and sales teams when it comes to passing on leads. For example, when there is a mismatch in the definition of what constitutes a Sales Qualified Lead. As a result, new customers fail to materialize and the leads gained cannot be reused.
For more and, above all, high-quality sales leads, you therefore need one thing: well thought-out lead management.
With Lead Management to More Sales Leads
Lead management plays a significant role in marketing and sales. It is the core element of every company in order to generate high-quality leads and win new customers.
In other words, it improves the collaboration between marketing and sales through targeted and consistent communication regarding new leads.
On the other hand, it is mainly about planning and the successful implementation of strategies and measures for the acquisition and development of new contacts, as well as the acquisition of new customers.
The following 6 tips will help you to successfully generate sales leads and customers.
Tip 1: Know the Customer Journey of the Sales Lead
The marketing term customer journey refers to the customer's journey: If you want to receive sales leads and encourage them to make a purchase, you also need to know the customer's path.
The touch points - also called touchpoints - show this path in individual steps. Touchpoints on the customer journey can be, for example, posts on social media platforms, a billboard, a Google Ad or even a personal contact. So, they are the touchpoints of your potential customers with your business.
In order to better understand the incentives and needs of sales leads, it is therefore important to know the customer journey - in order to motivate them to use your services with suitable content.
A lead goes through the following four phases of the customer journey:
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Attract: Capture the attention of your customers by addressing pain points and arouse their interest with possible solutions.
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Engage: Deepen the existing knowledge and evoke a potential customer's desire for a specific solution.
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Convert: If the lead is ready for a first contact, make it as easy as possible to get an appointment or the right person.
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Delight: Provide the qualified contact with relevant information and instructions to anticipate any questions they may have about your products and services.
Source: Customer Journey according to Pedalix
Tip 2: Create Relevant Content for the Sales Lead
Content marketing represents a key point for the successful generation of leads. Therefore, create relevant content for your target audience that you have defined. This works, for example, with the help of a persona: a customer who represents the target audience and makes an abstract market tangible. Important factors for creating a persona can be:
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Personal characteristics: Age, marital status, interests, etc.
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Occupation
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Media usage behaviour
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relevant problems (pain points)
To reach sales leads, you need to share your business expertise with your target audience. This is done, for example, in the form of information and knowledge - such as blogposts, videos and images. This positions you as an expert in your subject area and creates trust and closeness with potential buyers.
An important component of content marketing is search engine optimization (SEO) for your digital content. In the World Wide Web today, it is therefore indispensable to optimize content for keywords.
Note: Digital trends are constantly changing - this also applies to SEO trends. If you want to successfully position your business to stand out from the competition, it is therefore best to always stay up to date.
Tip 3: Send Personalized Newsletters
Personalized newsletters add value to you and your potential customers:
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A customized email creates attention and really picks up the contact.
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With little effort, you manage to build trust and stay in the memory through personalized emails. The idea behind it: Those who trust usually show a greater willingness to buy.
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Potential customers are more likely to stay with you through personalized emails, so that the churn rate remains low.
Source: Personalized Newsletter from Pedalix Software
Tip 4: Play on Social Media Channels with Relevant Content
Today, no company can do without social media. Therefore, create relevant content for your presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and the like, for example, to attract the attention of decision-makers.
Social media helps companies to increase their brand awareness and to provide the target audience with up-to-date topics. In addition, the platform offers the ideal space to interact with its potential customers and thus stay in the conversation.
The content strategy of your company determines its success. So it's not enough to just run channels. Consider the following points when planning your content for social media:
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Define target audience
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Determine content forms
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Prepare content suitable for the platform
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Determine interaction strategy
It is often worthwhile to let experienced social media experts do the work. After all, social media require constant care - and often every day.
Tip 5: Qualify Sales Lead
Ideally, the marketing department will pass qualified leads to the sales department, which will target a purchase. But before that, the question is: Are your potential buyers ready to buy? Or are they just looking for more information?
Lead qualification helps to find this out - and to bring the lead to the target with appropriate measures and suitable speed. More and more companies are handing over this time-consuming process to suitable service providers so that they can concentrate on the essentials.
Basically, the following applies: The quality of the leads can be checked with suitable lead systems. This includes, above all, lead scoring. Scoring evaluates the collected leads and ranks them according to sales priority. This means that as soon as a lead is mature, it is passed on to the sales team.
Source: Scoring from Pedalix Software
Tip 6: Use Marketing Sutomation
Even the best strategy won't help if companies don't recognize the potential of their contacts. The risk is particularly great today: Big Data leads to getting lost in data. Those who still organize their business processes manually must therefore generally reckon with losses.
Marketing Automation provides a remedy at the crucial points. The automated processes are used, for example, in the generation of leads, in email marketing and in scoring. In other words, marketing automation not only relieves the burden on marketing and sales, but also makes a decisive contribution to the sales success of your company when used correctly.
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